


Dirty Duelling

by kaylquail



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Don't drink and duel, Drunk Sex, Heartshipping, M/M, Parody, Polyamory, Porn with a flimsy plot, Prideshipping, Puzzleshipping, Rivalry, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-01-15 17:17:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 25,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18503485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaylquail/pseuds/kaylquail
Summary: The Pharaoh finally responds to one of Kaiba's late-night messages inviting him to duel. Plus the aftermath, as Yuugi, the Pharaoh and Kaiba play a roleplay game with Bakura.Silly prideshipping, with a bit of puzzleshipping on the side and some heartshipping in later chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

It was an odd message that the Pharaoh had received from Seto Kaiba that afternoon, cryptic enough to induce him to actually read the thing for once, instead of groaning at the sight of it and ignoring his phone for the next few hours.

Usually the messages he sent were so bloody predictable, and he always wanted to duel at the most inconvenient times. Granted, often the Pharaoh suspected Seto was drunk; the first message would come through at ten o’clock in the evening or so, and would be followed up by increasingly poorly spelled and nonsensical taunts until three in the morning, by which time he had presumably passed out. For someone who seemed so attached to his pride and dignity, he seemed awfully susceptible to the temptation of drunk-dialling his rival.

No, this message had a different tone to it. For starters, it was sent before seven o’clock, and didn’t contain a single spelling mistake or predictive text mishap. When you typed out the word “deck” several times per paragraph, misspellings tended to be somewhat awkward. It also contained none of the usual insults, which was so surprising that the Pharaoh read it through multiple times, frowning to himself as he tried to work out what he must have missed.

He spent the rest of the evening thinking it over, quietly reading and rereading the message whenever he thought that Yuugi wasn’t looking. He hummed quietly to himself as he stood up.

“You’re not actually going to go, are you, Pharaoh?”

“Go… where?” _Smooth, Pharaoh, smooth._ He felt his cheeks visibly darken, even in the dim light of Yuugi’s television as he played one of those video games he liked so much.

“You’re not as subtle as you think, you know. I’ve seen you texting Kaiba all evening.”

“I’ve not been-” The Pharaoh made a sort of offended scoffing sound that wasn’t fooling anyone. “I haven’t actually replied to him yet.”

“Riiight,” said Yuugi, rolling those enormous, adorable eyes of his. “So why have you been glued to your phone for the past two hours?”

Sighing, the Pharaoh tossed his phone to Yuugi, before flopping back down onto the bed in defeat. “Here, see for yourself. What do you think he means?”

“I thought you were the king of games. How hard can reading a text message be?”

“Ancient Egyptians didn’t-” But the Pharaoh was interrupted by Yuugi’s stifled laughter. He narrowed his eyes at the boy. “What’s so funny?”

“Um, Pharaoh, I think he wants to take you out on a date.”

Yuugi grinned at the Pharaoh’s grimace as he passed back the phone.

“A date? As in, _that_ kind of date?” He scanned the message one more time, then shook his head. “No, Yuugi, I’m sure it’s a duel he’s looking for – what else could that ‘D’ in the message stand for?”

“Yes… Duel,” said Yuugi, between chuckles poorly disguised behind his hand.

“You know what, Yuugi?” The Pharaoh rose decisively to his feet, pointing a dramatic finger at nothing in particular. “I was going to tell him that I was busy, but now I want to go just to prove you wrong. I don’t think Seto has an ounce of tenderness in him. A date, indeed. Ridiculous! It has been a while since I last defeated him, though, and I could do with a good, hard duel.”

As he turned to face Yuugi to say a resolute goodbye, his jacket billowed out behind him like a cape and he noticed the goosebumps prickling his exposed arms. Was he excited by the slim possibility that he was mistaken, or… “You should probably close that window while I’m out, Yuugi – it’s rather draughty, and I wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”

Yuugi scrambled to shut the window, and caught himself looking wistfully outside into the cool darkness, wondering where Kaiba planned to take the Pharaoh. Truthfully, he was beginning to regret having teased him about Seto’s message – he didn’t much fancy curling up alone tonight. He’d grown so used to the Pharaoh being around that sleep didn’t come easily without his reassuring warmth beside him in the single bed they shared. And sleep certainly wouldn’t come easily knowing that that asshole _Seto Kaiba_ of all people was the one dragging his beloved away.

“What time will you be back, Pharaoh?”

“I’ll only be out for as long as it takes to wipe the floor with him, Yuugi. I doubt he’d have the stamina to keep me up duelling _all_ night.”

_He’ll try to keep you up all night doing_ something, Yuugi pouted to himself.

“I’ll be home before morning, Yuugi,” the Pharaoh said softly, before tapping out a quick message to Kaiba. “You know how much I…”

Yuugi’s eyes widened further than the Pharaoh thought possible, glimmering as the boy blushed with a silly smile across his face. All, apparently, was forgiven as his fuzzy feelings towards the Pharaoh intensified. “I love you too, Pharaoh.” He grinned and managed a playful wink. “Have fun on your date with Seto.”

The Pharaoh glowered at Yuugi, and his fingers clenched tightly into fists. “It’s _not_ a date!”

Yuugi could only laugh in response; while the Pharaoh clearly thought he was being firm and dignified, he came across more like a petulant child protesting that they had absolutely not made those handprints on the wall whilst smeared with incriminating, colourful spots of paint.

“Damn it, Yuugi.” His phone bleeped with a response from Kaiba, telling him that a limo had been sent to collect him from the game shop. “I really mean it. We’re just going to play Duel Monsters, okay?”

“I don’t know why you’re protesting quite this hard, Pharaoh. Whoever you choose to, ahem, _duel_ … That’s your business. As long as you’re back to snuggle before morning, I really don’t mind.”

The Pharaoh wasn’t sure why he was protesting so hard either. The whole purpose of going out and winning a duel against Seto was simply to prove that Yuugi had gotten the wrong end of the stick – and because damn it, a man has needs. Needs that can only be satisfied by a good game of…

_Oh no!_ The Pharaoh tried to hide the panic from his expression as the deck of Duel Monsters cards he’d been trying to imagine turned into Seto’s smug face, towering above him as he tugged on the chain around the Pharaoh’s neck, drawing him closer...

Yuugi yawned. “Well, your usual spot in the bed will be waiting for you. Just… take a shower if you end up duelling too vigorously, okay?”

Massaging his temples with his hands, the Pharaoh nodded, and quickly stepped outside before the warmth of his cheeks and the barely perceptible trickle of blood from his nostril gave him away.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a black limo already outside the game shop as the Pharaoh crept out into the cool night air, almost as if it had been waiting for him since before he’d even agreed to meet Seto. There was a light drizzle, but it wasn’t nearly enough to constitute the cold shower he so desperately needed; he glanced over his shoulder towards Yuugi’s window as he slipped inside, but from the flickering light in his bedroom, he guessed that Yuugi had gone back to his game.

He settled himself onto the white leather seat with a growing apprehension. The driver wordlessly pulled away, and all the Pharaoh could make out of his face were a pair of glasses glinting ominously in the streetlights as they drove towards the centre of Domino city.

“This better not be a trap, Kaiba,” he muttered to himself.

The limo began to slow down on a brightly-lit street full of expensive bars and casinos. A tall, lean silhouette waited beneath one of the bright streetlights, gravity-defying coat rippling behind him in the sparkling drizzle. Kaiba reached out and opened the limo door.

“Pharaoh. I’m glad you came.”

The Pharaoh pulled himself up and out of the car, carefully making sure he didn’t accidentally brush up against Seto as he did. Despite the cold temperature and the rain, his skin was feeling distinctly warm. He certainly didn’t need it to heat up any more.

“Let’s do this, Kaiba,” said the Pharaoh, fingers curling around his deck, as if to check that it was still there.

“Can I at least get you a drink first?” There was the beginnings of a smug smirk on Seto’s lips. “After all, you know you’d never get into any of these bars without me, champion duellist or not.”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” the Pharaoh asked, with a superior grin of his own. “Drunk or sober, you know that I’d still take you. Why draw it out?”

“Don’t argue Pharaoh, or I might change my mind,” said Kaiba, looking down at the Pharaoh. At a few inches over five feet, the Pharaoh was a perfect size for him to look down on; he liked that. “I’ll buy you some of the most expensive cocktails in Domino city, while we sit on a private balcony in one of the most expensive bars. _Then_ we’ll do it.”

While he’d never been one to be impressed by such tacky displays of wealth, the Pharaoh certainly wasn’t going to refuse. Perhaps a cocktail or two would give him time to relax a little and calm himself down before they duelled. He couldn’t understand why his heart was beating quite so quickly, or why his skin felt so damn sensitive; even the tickle of the cool raindrops made him want to arch his back and purr like a cat. He was way beyond cold showers. He hoped the balcony Seto had mentioned would be dark; these trousers were far too tight to hide anything, even under his multiple studded belts.

Seto Kaiba walked slightly ahead, leading him towards the back entrance of a brightly-lit bar, guarded by a heavy-set bouncer with a shaved head. The Pharaoh watched nervously as the doorman immediately stepped aside at the mere sight of Kaiba, waving him through with a smile that looked extremely unnatural on his coarse features.

“And this must be your-”

“Guest, yes.” Seto cut the doorman off quickly, perhaps with a pink tinge to his own cheeks. The Pharaoh couldn’t quite tell.

He followed Kaiba up two flights of stairs to a quiet bar on the rooftop. Aside from the wall the staircase was built into and the ceiling, the whole room was built out of glass windows and sliding doors leading out onto secluded, covered balconies with patio heaters by the tables. There was nobody else around, except a smartly dressed, dashingly handsome bartender, who was already pouring two glasses of prosecco.

“Here,” Kaiba said, gesturing towards one of the open patio doors. “You sit down, I’ll join you in a moment.”

The Pharaoh obliged, stepping gingerly out onto the balcony. His eyes widened as he noticed that there were little tealights burning on nearly every surface – the table, the floor, even the plant pots. There were just two chairs free of candles, rather too close together for the Pharaoh’s liking; he pulled them slightly apart, then sat down and looked vacantly at the cityscape ahead.

At this point, he was almost certain that he’d been wrong earlier. Unless Kaiba had planned the most romantic duel ever played in the history of Duel Monsters, this was definitely a date. His heart fluttered foolishly at the thought, and that disturbing image from earlier returned to haunt his thoughts once more, only in slightly more detail this time. He wondered if the real Kaiba would want to dominate him as much as he did in the Pharaoh’s daydreams.

“Pharaoh, is your – is your nose bleeding?”

Seto’s deep voice pulled the Pharaoh out of his reverie, and he hastily brought the back of his hand to his nose. _Damn._ There was far too much blood to pass off as a simple trick of the light. “Uh, so it is,” he acknowledged, and cleared his throat.

“Here.” Kaiba passed him a tissue and turned his head away while the Pharaoh sheepishly dabbed away the bleeding.

The bartender followed shortly after, placing a silver tray down on the table between them with two glasses of sparkling wine and the rest of the bottle. As the Pharaoh looked more closely, he noticed rose petals floating in the bottom of the glasses. He thanked the bartender while Seto picked up his drink.

Unsure of what to do next, the Pharaoh’s fingers curled around the delicate stem of his own glass. Seto raised his glass as if to make a toast, and said, “I’ll have you one way or another, Pharaoh.”

Oof. The exact opposite of what he needed to hear if he ever wanted his nose to stop bleeding. He surreptitiously dabbed at it again.

“We’re talking about Duel Monsters, right?”

Seto raised an eyebrow. So the Pharaoh’s attempt at feigning obtuseness had definitely failed, and they were not talking about Duel Monsters.

“All right, I have a proposition for you, Seto,” said the Pharaoh, taking a sip from his glass. He didn’t much care for the taste of sparkling wine, but even he had to admit that the rose was a wonderful touch.

“Oh?” Even though Kaiba was leaning towards the Pharaoh with a quizzical expression, he still managed to sound as though he didn’t care about the proposition at all.

“Duel me tonight. If you win, well, you’ve finally defeated me. If you lose… You can take me in whatever way you see fit.”

“I can’t tell if that implies you want me to win or lose.”

The Pharaoh paused for a moment. He hadn’t really thought that one through; too much blood had been diverted away from his brain, as the growing bulge in his trousers could attest. He was trying to hide it by strategically positioning the arm he wasn’t using to hold his glass, but with his permanently glowing cheeks and the suspicious trickles of blood from his nose, there was no way Seto hadn’t clocked his arousal.

Kaiba’s eyes narrowed. “You’re such a dork.” But he looked quite satisfied as he sipped on his wine. “Fine, I accept.”

The Pharaoh nodded determinedly, while Seto continued to smirk.

“But I have a feeling, Pharaoh, that regardless of the outcome of our duel,” he said, as his grin widened beneath infuriatingly self-satisfied eyes, “you’re coming home with me.”

Although he very much wanted to protest, the Pharaoh knew that Kaiba was probably right. He took a large gulp of wine, and watched Seto’s smug face as he reached towards the Pharaoh’s knee and gently traced a long, delicate finger along his thigh towards the aching tightness in his trousers.

The Pharaoh inhaled sharply and closed his eyes in an attempt to prevent his hips from twitching, but they seemed to move all of their own accord.

“Hmph, just as I thought.” Seto’s smile faded, and his mouth hung slightly open as his hand hesitated just by the buckle of the Pharaoh’s lowermost belt. “But if I beat you in this state… It won’t be a fair duel. You’re far too distracted.”

“What are you…” The sentence was supposed to end with “going to do about it?” perhaps with a suggestive expression on the Pharaoh’s face, but he trailed off as Seto’s fingers worked open his buckle and danced lightly over his crotch.

Kaiba knocked back the remainder of his drink, then slid out of his chair and knelt in front of the Pharaoh. Somehow, even though his head was below the Pharaoh’s, he still managed to look down at him as he smiled, deftly opening the second buckle before moving onto his fly.

“I think we both know that there’s only one way to clear your mind, don’t we?”

“Is this… wise?” The Pharaoh glanced back at the bartender, who seemed quite busy polishing the already gleaming surface of the bar.

“My tips are so generous, he’d never tell,” said Kaiba dismissively, teasing open his trousers. He pulled them down just enough to assess the bulge in all its glory through the Pharaoh’s black boxers.

“Wait.” The Pharaoh drank what remained in his glass, then quickly poured another, struggling to maintain an even rhythm of breathing as Seto’s warm lips met his stomach just above the waistband of his underwear. He was too sober for… whatever this was.

Soft fingertips grazed at his skin as they tunnelled beneath the elastic of his boxers, pulling it slowly forward as Seto’s mouth teased at him. He accidentally moaned aloud when Kaiba’s cheek brushed against the head of his cock; it wasn’t a manly or dignified noise by any stretch of the imagination, but nothing about this was dignified. He’d been lured out on a date under the false promise of a duel, and was now trembling at the sensation of his rival’s breath on his nether regions.

He took another large gulp of wine, wondering idly if anyone would be able to see them from the adjacent buildings. The candlelight was bright enough that he could see almost as much as in daylight. He watched Kaiba’s eyelashes flutter as his fringe tickled his stomach; the waistband of his boxers was nearly all the way down now, and he could feel a cold breeze on his bare skin.

The cold breeze was, however, no match for the intensity of his desire. Not that it mattered particularly, since almost as soon as his cock was exposed, he found it enveloped by Seto’s mouth.

He squeezed the delicate glass tightly in one hand, trembling as he tried to bring its contents towards his mouth before he broke the damn thing. The other hand found its way to Seto’s hair, grasped a tangle of it tightly, and pushed his head down further, until he heard him gag slightly.

He writhed and shuddered in that chair, biting his lip hard to stifle the moans that felt as though they were ringing out over the entire city. He opened his eyes briefly to look down at Kaiba; how he managed to look so superior and self-satisfied even on his knees with a dick in his mouth was quite beyond the Pharaoh.

Seto began to make a muffled sort of chuckling noise as the Pharaoh’s cock pulsed in his mouth, tantalisingly close to orgasm, then drew back, wiped his face on the back of his hand and gave a derisive laugh as the Pharaoh watched, confused, flushed and panting.

“You know what, Pharaoh? I’ve changed my mind about one thing.”

The Pharaoh tried to settle his helplessly twitching body as his mouth formed a silent “O” shape.

“I am going to let you duel in that state after all.”

“Did you give yourself a disadvantage too, Kaiba?” The Pharaoh’s voice was somewhat breathless, but he’d recovered just enough composure to make his quip while eying Seto’s crotch.

“Shut up, dork.” Kaiba pulled another tissue out of his pocket. “Your nose is bleeding again. What are you, a fucking anime character?”

The Pharaoh sipped at his drink and slowly put his clothes back in order, looking far too pleased with himself. He winced as he fastened his trousers; although they looked sexy as hell, they were entirely impractical for any situation where he might find himself getting aroused. Finally, he took the tissue from Kaiba and mopped up his nose. He might as well have just stuffed that damn tissue in his nostril and have done with it.

Seto topped up the Pharaoh’s glass, before drinking the rest of the wine straight from the bottle, lounging decadently, sideways in his chair.

Ugh, why did he have to look so damn gorgeous? The Pharaoh was almost regretting challenging him to a duel now, wishing they could have just skipped straight to the bedroom. He pulled out his deck, as though to remind himself that a world existed outside his throbbing cock and Seto Kaiba draped irresistibly over a wooden chair.

He took another long swig from his glass, although by this point he already felt quite tipsy. Still, such a surreal evening seemed to demand a stiff drink or several. When his wine was gone, he put the glass down decisively on the table, and wafted his deck in Kaiba’s direction.

“Don’t you think it’s time to-”

“Drink cocktails?” Seto knocked back the last of the wine from the bottle. “I thought you’d never ask.”

The Pharaoh looked from Kaiba to his deck and back again. He narrowed his eyes. “You really are trying to get me drunk, aren’t you?”

“No, I just like cocktails.”

The Pharaoh’s lips tried and failed to form many different words, but in the end the only one that came forth was, “What?”

“I just like cocktails,” he repeated slowly. “They might look girly, but they’re strong. And they taste good. Wait here while I get us a couple of Long Island Iced Teas.” As he stood up, he chuckled to himself. “Besides, you didn’t think you were going to get your gratification that easily, did you? I’m going to make you work for this duel, Pharaoh.”


	3. Chapter 3

Several cocktails later, the balcony table was littered with empty glasses and damp paper umbrellas. It was difficult to tell who was more tipsy, Kaiba or the Pharoah – although the former had a distinct advantage purely due to his size. The drizzle seemed to have stopped for the time being, and the clouds had given way to reveal a bright, full moon and a pretty smattering of stars in the dark night sky. The tealights were beginning to burn out, one by one, slowly and subtly lowering the light levels on the balcony until the two men could barely see one another.

Their conversations had been a non-stop back and forth of teasing taunts, about Duel Monsters _and_ other things, punctuated by occasional frantic kisses and wandering hands, until one of them pulled away and told the other, smirking, that they’d have to wait until after the duel.

Kaiba had lost count of the number of times he’d seen the Pharaoh dab at his nose when he thought he wasn’t looking. He was a lot of things – pretty, lithe, intelligent, to name a few – but he had proven time and time again that subtle was not one of them.

“We’d better get down to it before you pass out from blood loss,” said Kaiba eventually, appraising the number of glasses on the table. His head was swimming pleasantly, but he wasn’t sure if it was due to the alcohol, the Pharaoh, or the sweet, sweet taste of his impending victory.

“What do you mean?” The Pharaoh took a disappointing sip from the empty glass in his hand. “What happened to my Margarita?”

“You drank it. Along with the three you had before that one.”

“All right,” he said, pushing the glass back onto the table while pouting at it. He picked up his deck and began to shuffle clumsily. As he dropped his Kuriboh card perilously close to the flame of a tealight, he realised that those Margaritas, the Long Island Iced Tea, and the several other pretty drinks he’d forgotten the names of, had really gone to his head.

He was so far gone that for a fraction of a second he considered tossing his treasured deck aside, sweeping the empty glasses off the table and letting Seto have him there and then, all while declaring, “Fuck Duel Monsters!”

After that particular mental image and the deal they’d made, there was no way he could lose this duel. “It’s time,” he said, as he neatened up his stack of cards before holding them out to Kaiba to cut, “to duel.”

Seto gave a firm nod, jerking his hands slightly in a poor attempt at covering up fumbling his shuffle.

They handed their decks to each other, cut them, and then Seto rose to his feet as they swapped back. “Come inside.”

As soon as the Pharaoh stood up, it felt as though the effects of his drinks had increased ten-fold. He briefly wondered if Kaiba had spiked his drink with something, but when he added together all those cocktails he quickly acknowledged that this was, without question, all his own doing. He was nearly as sure of himself as ever, but this was his first time drinking and duelling. He hoped it wasn’t anything like driving – he’d seen a lot of warnings about not mixing those.

They walked through to the interior of the bar, where the bartender seemed to be waiting for them. As soon as they set foot on the gleaming black granite floor tiles, he pulled a lever and all the tables and stools sank into the floor, providing the perfect amount of space for a duel.

“Your duel disks, Kaiba,” said the bartender, gesturing in front of him.

Kaiba and the Pharaoh both walked, on slightly uncoordinated legs, over to the bar and picked up a duel disk each, before standing, facing each other, at opposite ends of the room.

The Pharaoh smiled to himself. Kaiba’s hair was looking distinctly dishevelled, and there was a tiny bruise peeking out from under his upturned collar where he’d overenthusiastically bitten him in a moment of passion. His face was thoroughly flushed, and the serious, superior mask he always wore was beginning to crack. As he drew his hand, the Pharaoh noted that he was squinting at his cards in the manner of someone who was almost too drunk to see straight.

He drew his own hand, slowly and purposefully. It was a little dark in the bar, so he closed one eye to read the text on each card more clearly (because it was, of course, the low light making it difficult to read, and certainly nothing else) before giving up and thanking the Gods he knew this deck well enough not to have to bother reading the cards.

Kaiba narrowed his eyes. “Do you want to go first, Pharaoh, or shall I?”

The Pharaoh’s head was cloudier than he wanted to admit. “Uh, go ahead, Kaiba,” he said, wondering what exactly he was going to do with the cards he had drawn.

The duel proceeded in almost the exact same way as any other game of Duel Monsters, albeit with more than one instance of a dramatic draw going awry. The bartender thankfully caught one of Kaiba’s prized Blue Eyes White Dragons as it flew across the room, and the Pharaoh seemed to have lost his usual ability to hold cards with just one or two fingers. His frustration grew each time he had to bend over to retrieve another card, while Kaiba’s cheeks darkened at the sight of his tight trousers stretching over his behind.

But there were plenty of twists, “Oh no!”s and “Not so fast!”s to make up for their deficiencies in coordination, and the sheer enthusiasm in the volume of their voices as they tried to outmanoeuvre each other had even the bartender rosy-cheeked and dabbing at his nose.

“So, Pharaoh, how do you want me to screw you? At Duel Monsters, or…?”

“Hah, you’d better hold that thought for now,” returned the Pharaoh as he slotted another card into his duel disk. “You might have to bend me over the table after all.”

The bartender’s eyebrows were raised so high they almost disappeared under his hairline as he listened to their taunts – they had started out tame enough, with comments more or less related to the game, but they were rapidly becoming nothing more than vulgar declarations of desire. He almost wished he’d made an audio recording of it for when his shift ended and he could have some private time.

The Pharaoh called his last attack, sending Seto’s life points plummeting to zero, and grinned as he watched almost the entirety of Kaiba’s admittedly limited emotional range flicker across his face, ending with a sort of speechless anger.

He gathered his cards and put them in the pocket of his jacket-cum-cloak, before draping it safely over the surface of the bar.

“Well then, Seto,” he said, running a hand through his tousled, tangled highlights. “How are you going to ‘screw me,’ as you so eloquently put it?”

Kaiba was still speechless, but for another reason entirely now. He pulled off his sweeping leather jacket, slammed it to the ground, and moved towards the Pharaoh, who was preening and biting his lip as he teased at the hem of his tight black tank top.

“Oh, you are going to _pay_ for this, Pharaoh,” said Kaiba, in a slightly choked-up voice.

“Whose nose is bleeding now?” was the only response he could find as Seto grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him every bit as roughly as the Pharaoh had hoped he would.


	4. Chapter 4

The bartender must have pushed the lever to make the furniture reappear while the Pharaoh was too busy melting into Kaiba’s arms to notice; as Seto pushed him backwards, he found himself lying across a table which definitely hadn’t been there while they were duelling. His legs were spread in the air with Kaiba pressed up between them, warm yet the very opposite of the soft comfort of Yuugi’s body that he was accustomed to.

Even through the fabric of his trousers, he could feel Kaiba’s bulge prodding him lightly in the ass as their hips moved together like frantic, drunken bunnies. He was so hard it was physically painful, and his belts were digging uncomfortably into the small of his back, where they’d been displaced. But the tension of being so close to being fucked yet knowing that this was probably the wrong time, wrong place, was too delicious to give up just yet.

“You did say that I might have to bend you over a table,” snarled Kaiba, his breath rasping as he looked down on the writhing Pharaoh, whose tanned skin was glowing beautifully pink as beads of sweat formed on his forehead beneath untamed tendrils of blonde.

“And you did lose the duel, fair and square,” agreed the Pharaoh. He glanced over towards the bartender, who had been very attentively rubbing the same pristinely sparkling glass for five straight minutes. “But perhaps we should take this elsewhere?”

Seto gave a derisive laugh. “Oh no, not just yet. I’m going to make you my bitch right here on this table… _then_ I’m going to take you home.”

The Pharaoh damn near whimpered at those words; there was a small, damp patch in his boxers from all this anticipation, and he needed to find some way to stall before it was all over too quickly. “Aren’t we going to need some lube? This isn’t a bad yaoi manga.” At least, he certainly hoped it wasn’t.

The bartender finally placed the gleaming glass with the others, and cleared his throat. As if by magic, a shiny chrome lotion dispenser had appeared on the bar. Seto held out a hand, and the bartender threw it over with a knowing smile, perfectly aimed into Kaiba’s palm. For a drunk man, the Pharaoh had to admit it was a fantastic catch.

“I told you my tips were generous,” murmured Kaiba, placing the bottle on the table beside them.

“I’ll just be heading out for a smoke break,” said the bartender quietly, gesturing outside.

“That man doesn’t even smoke. He won’t be back until I’m done with you.”

Fine, scratch that thing about not being impressed by tacky displays of wealth – this particular tacky display of wealth was music to the Pharaoh’s ears. Finally, he could let himself relax into whatever Kaiba wanted to do, without worrying about being watched or listened in on by some random bartender. A hot bartender, but still.

The Pharaoh’s arms were above his head, with the spikes in his wristbands catching slightly in his explosion of hair. He watched eagerly as Seto looked over his body, wondering where to begin. It looked more like he was plotting out some grand chess strategy than preparing to ravage someone, but it still somehow drove the Pharaoh wild with impatient lust. _Perhaps it’s a compliment from Kaiba_ , he thought, _to be treated like a sexy strategy game_.

But by this point, he was beyond any kind of reason – all he wanted was Kaiba’s cock inside him.

Seto’s long fingers traced over the Pharaoh’s belt buckles and teased them open for the second time that evening, then he pulled up the tank top as far as it would go and kissed his nipples, each in turn, before nibbling at the left. His hand curled around the chain holding the millennium puzzle until his knuckles were white, then he tugged on it until the Pharaoh’s lips smashed up against his. The frenzy of kisses that followed left both men breathless.

“Are you just going to lie there, Pharaoh?” asked Kaiba, when he finally had to admit defeat and withdraw for air. “Take off that tank top or I’m going to rip it off.”

“I’d like to see you try,” said the Pharaoh, with far more of a smirk than was reasonable for someone in his position.

With a grunt of determination, Kaiba grabbed a handful of the tank top in each hand and pulled as hard as he could; to both of their surprise, the fabric gave a satisfying rip as it tore all the way down, revealing most of the Pharaoh’s chest. Seto ran his hands all over the warm, muscled skin before leaning down and stealing another bite of his left nipple, causing the Pharaoh to wince slightly at the sweet sting.

Seto’s hands made surprisingly light work of undoing the Pharaoh’s trousers, then pulling them down while he wriggled impatiently on the table beneath him. He paused briefly to stroke the quivering head beneath the Pharaoh’s stretched boxers, then tugged those away too and grinned with satisfaction at how impossibly hard and flushed he found his cock.

With one hand, he deftly dispensed some lube and warmed it up between fingers and thumb, before gently rubbing it along the respectable length of the Pharaoh’s shaft; the Pharaoh trembled on the table, half with cold as a breeze from the open door tickled his damp skin, and half with the agony of anticipating Kaiba’s next touch.

“I never thought it would be so much fun to watch you squirm like this, Pharaoh.”

But the Pharaoh was in no state to be putting words together into sentences. He watched helplessly as Kaiba unzipped his own trousers and pulled them down just far enough to let his dick spring out proudly from behind the waistband of his underwear, then he reached across for more lube.

“Let’s see how much more I can make you squirm, shall we? You might have beat me at Duel Monsters, but I’m the one with the power now.”

The Pharaoh felt the warm lube, then Seto’s finger, as they made gentle contact with his asshole, all while he maintained a slow rhythm with his other hand. Even just that light touch had him moaning out loud in a voice even higher than Yuugi’s; his eyes rolled back in his head as he pushed against the finger, willing Seto to just hurry up and get it inside him.

Kaiba gave him one finger, then two, and watched with satisfaction as the Pharaoh’s face screwed up in agonising pleasure.

“More.” The Pharaoh’s voice was barely more than a hoarse, breathless whisper. “Please.” He might have been embarrassed by the way that he was begging, had he been capable of thinking about anything else at that moment, but his brain was thoroughly addled with a potent mixture of cocktails and desire.

“No, Pharaoh, not now,” he said, and withdrew both of his hands, leaving a powerful tingling sensation raging through the Pharaoh’s entire body. He grabbed more lube, and applied it liberally to himself. “You’ve humiliated me enough times at Duel Monsters, and ignored enough of my messages asking for a rematch, and now I’m going to give you a taste of your own medicine.” An oddly cruel laugh came from his smug grin. “It hurts, doesn’t it, just how close you are?”

Nodding, with uneven, rough breaths, the Pharaoh said, “It’s agony. Beautiful agony.” Then he chuckled, in a tone to match Kaiba’s. “Although… I’d wager nowhere near as agonising as losing your own tournament.”

“Is this really the time to be bringing that up?” Kaiba sneered, pinching the tiniest bit of loose skin on the Pharaoh’s thigh. He dragged the Pharaoh forward a few inches by pulling his legs, then pushed his well-lubricated dick into the hole that had been begging for it all evening; it took all of him right away, and the Pharaoh’s blissful cries echoed throughout the room.

Seto had all the intention of following up with at least one decent comeback, among as many sneering taunts as he could fit between energetic thrusts, but the sensation of the Pharaoh’s ass enveloping his cock almost made his knees buckle, and all that came out of his mouth instead was a chain of random euphoric noises.

The Pharaoh lay back as Seto fucked him like a rag doll, resting his ankles on Kaiba’s shoulders and relishing the exquisite pain of having been brought so close to orgasm twice now in one night. He had to admit to himself that he was enjoying this date far more than he ever imagined he would; as he moved his hips in time with Kaiba’s, he watched as the other man’s face twisted in ecstasy, every so often emitting guttural, animal growls, and shivered all over.

Suddenly, Seto grabbed hold of his shoulders, digging his short nails deep into the flesh, and pulled the Pharaoh close to him. His teeth sank into the Pharaoh’s neck as his cock pulsed, unleashing its load, and he made a very similar sort of sound to the one he reserved for winning at Duel Monsters – not that that was a sound the Pharaoh was overly familiar with.

As he pulled out, his fringe dripping with sweat and his usually pale cheeks bursting with colour, a thick trickle of his cum dribbled out of the Pharaoh’s ass and down his leg. The Pharaoh was still agonisingly hard, and feeling the volume of semen dripping out of him only made him twitch and shiver all the more.

“Well, would you look at the time,” said Kaiba, looking remarkably smug for someone who could barely stand. “It’s time to… dress, so I can take you home and fuck you again.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” said the Pharaoh, rolling his eyes as he put his own feet on the floor and steadied himself on the table. He got himself dressed with as much dignity as he could muster, which, granted, was not a lot. He had to fasten his belts on the loosest hole just to avoid the pain of crushing his erection again, and his tank top remained in tatters. He wrapped his jacket around himself and fastened it up tightly, in case anyone saw them on their way home and asked awkward questions.

Almost as soon as the Pharaoh was decent again, the bartender returned and asked politely if they would like to order anything else to drink.

“I’ll have one more Margarita,” said the Pharaoh, wishing it was less obvious that he’d just been fucked silly. His hair was always a little on the crazy side, but it was all tangled and out of place, and some of it was greasy where Seto had grabbed hold of it with lube-covered fingers.

“I’ll have the same, I suppose.”

They sat and sipped on their Margaritas, and the Pharaoh furtively checked his phone. The night was surprisingly young, but he did have one message from Yuugi letting him know that he was going to sleep now, and that he couldn’t wait to feel the Pharaoh’s arms around him. He smiled at that; he couldn’t wait to get home to Yuugi either, but first… there was still some business to settle.

“I can’t stay out _all_ night, Kaiba, but I’ll stay out long enough for you to finish with me.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be finished with you, Pharaoh, not until I win a duel against you… but your point is taken. I guess that means it’s time to… drink up and get in the limo then, dork.”

“I think _you’re_ probably the dork for making that joke for the third time in one evening.” But the Pharaoh finished his drink anyway.

“Hmph, well, at least I don’t get a nosebleed every five minutes when I’m turned on.”

The Pharaoh instinctively reached for his nose, and wiped a significant trickle of blood onto his sleeve. Then he grinned at Seto, and laughed. “I think you’d better look in the mirror.”


	5. Chapter 5

The limo ride to Kaiba’s mansion was a somewhat awkward affair; the Pharaoh had prayed to the Gods that nobody would see them on their way out, and the Gods seemed to have smiled upon him this time, but as soon as they got into that car, Seto’s hands _refused_ to stay away from him. Seto made polite meaningless chit-chat with the driver while stroking at the Pharaoh’s thighs and teasing at the bulge between them, a sadistic grin on his face the whole time as he delighted at the other’s embarrassment at having to bite his tongue and keep a straight face.

Kaiba certainly was playing a cruel game, but the Pharaoh would be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying every second of it.

The rain seemed to have started again, and was pounding down so hard that as the limo pulled up into Kaiba’s driveway, it almost looked as though they were driving through a river. The Pharaoh was secretly glad for a break from Kaiba’s hands; as good as they felt, he needed to cool down a little, get himself in check. The chauffeur opened an umbrella as he stepped outside, then hurried round to the side to open the door for his passengers. Kaiba took the umbrella, then held his hand out to the Pharaoh.

A short dash later through the refreshing rain, they were inside and drying off. The Pharaoh removed his wet shoes as soon as he could, not wanting to dirty the carpet, then reluctantly peeled off his damp jacket.

“Seto?” A soft voice called out from the top of the grand, sweeping staircase in front of them. “Big brother?”

The Pharaoh froze, and looked wide-eyed at Kaiba, who for once was hiding his smirk behind his hand, trying to play innocent as his younger brother skipped down to meet them.

“Oh, you brought a guest.”

Seto cleared his throat. “I thought you’d be asleep by now, Mokuba.”

“I was waiting up for you, Seto. I get worried sometimes when you go out in such a hurry. I thought something might be wrong.” Mokuba looked at the Pharaoh properly, and his eyes darkened in confusion, though there was a hint of a smile flickering across his lips. “What happened to your tank top, Pharaoh? Something _did_ happen, didn’t it?”

“Nothing you need to worry about, Mokuba,” Seto cut in, massaging his temple with one hand. “Why don’t you go get some popcorn or something and go back to whatever you were doing?”

“I’m not hungry,” whined Mokuba, “and besides, why didn’t you tell me you’d be bringing someone back?”

“I, uh, I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything,” said the Pharaoh, painfully aware of how uncharacteristically dishevelled he looked. It was a good job Mokuba wasn’t the kind of person to jump to wild conclusions. “I just came to answer your brother’s challenge to a duel.”

“Oh please, both of you smell like a distillery – are you really going to duel in this state?”

“What are you insinuating, Mokuba?” said Seto, his arms folded. The threat in his voice might have held far more weight had he not hiccoughed loudly afterwards.

“I’ll get you both some water, I suppose.” Mokuba was still eyeing the Pharaoh’s ripped clothes. “Maybe it would be better to _duel_ another time, when you’re both a little more clear-headed?”

“I am perfectly clear-headed,” protested the Pharaoh. He didn’t like Mokuba’s emphasis on the word duel. “It takes more than a few cocktails to get the better of the king of games.”

Mokuba narrowed his eyes. “Alright then, tell me this: how many cards does pot of greed allow you to draw?” he asked, while thrusting three fingers towards the Pharaoh’s face.

“Thr-oo. Of course.”

“‘Thr-oo’ isn’t a number, dork,” said Seto smugly.

“I said two, damn it,” said the Pharaoh, but the other two exchanged glances. “Seto’s at least as drunk as I am. Look at him – he’s got hiccoughs and everything.”

“I rest my case,” said Mokuba, before shaking his head and starting along the hallway. After a few paces he turned back around and added, “I’ll bring you some water to your bedroom, okay?”

As soon as he’d turned away again, Seto gave the Pharaoh’s ass a quick squeeze and nibbled on his ear; his breath tickled just the right part of his neck to bring all of his suppressed arousal back in one feverish surge. The Pharaoh opened his mouth and then closed it again; if Mokuba had turned around at that moment, the Kuriboh would really have been out of the bag.

“What are you doing?” the Pharaoh hissed, and Kaiba pinched his ass again in response.

“Just teasing you again. Come on… Let’s get upstairs before Mokuba returns.”

Kaiba led him up the grand staircase looking out over the reception room. There was a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and countless expensive ornaments hanging from the walls. It seemed almost more extravagant than a Pharaoh’s tomb full of riddles, traps, and cursed treasure.

Kaiba’s bedroom was just down the hallway, and had a large, pristinely-made bed in the middle of the room, with a cuddly white dragon sitting on one of the pillows, facing the doorway as though eagerly awaiting its master. Seto dashed over to the bed and tossed the dragon unceremoniously onto the floor, while the Pharaoh tried not to smile at the thought of serious, superior Seto Kaiba snuggling up with it every night.

There were many other dragon-themed objects around the room; the longer the Pharaoh spent in there, the more he realised that this was essentially a shrine to Kaiba’s beloved Blue Eyes White Dragon. He wondered what might be lurking in the half-open drawers of the bedside table, but barely dared look.

After a quick glance around the bedroom, Seto walked back to the Pharaoh, who was lingering nervously in the doorway, and took his hand with an unusual tenderness. He leaned down to kiss the Pharaoh’s forehead, but was met by ravenous lips instead.

As their mouths worked together, the Pharaoh found himself pushed roughly against the bedroom door, causing an enormous slam to reverberate through the building. He felt Seto’s lips curl into a grin against his, and a hand reached up and grabbed the chain around his neck.

“Come on, Pharaoh, it’s time for bed.”

Seto pulled on the chain, stepping purposefully back towards the bed; the Pharaoh had no choice but to follow.

“Get down,” he purred, then pushed the Pharaoh down onto the blue and white covers.

The sheets were soft, but the bed itself was pleasantly firm. After his evening thus far, the Pharaoh was glad for its comfort and sank straight back into it, arms flailing above his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, but they quickly snapped open at the sensation of hands around his neck, pulling the chain up and over his tousled hair.

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to your puzzle… Keep your arms there.”

The Pharaoh tilted his head just far back enough to see Seto wrapping the chain through the bars of his bed frame, then he felt the cold links of the chain nip at his skin.

“You’re mine now, Pharaoh,” he said, and got up onto the bed, positioning himself between the Pharaoh’s legs.

A warm twinge flooded through his hips as he watched Kaiba make his plotting face again, hands outstretched indecisively as he worked out where to begin. The Pharaoh instinctively tried to reach towards his belt to hurry Seto along, but the restraint was surprisingly effective, and all he could do was watch Seto with wide-eyed anticipation.

Seto’s fingers finally decided to get straight down to it and began opening his buckles and fly; memories of those same fingers on the candle-lit balcony and then on the bar table sent jolts of electricity all through the Pharaoh’s body. He inhaled sharply at the exquisite tingle of Kaiba’s touches.

Seto tugged slightly on his trousers, grinning in his own anticipation, but just as he bent down for a teasing kiss, there was a knock at the door.

“Don’t-”

But the door was already halfway open by then, and Mokuba appeared with two glasses of water balanced on a silver tray.

“ _Mokuba_! Why did you even knock if you were going to waltz right on in anyway?”

The teenager’s eyes widened, and he nearly dropped the tray in his haste to put it down. Then he cocked his head to one side and sighed, glaring at his brother.

“Oh come on, Seto. I _told_ you I was going to fetch some water… You could at least have waited five minutes. Just five minutes! Then I could have happily gone about my life without ever having walked in on this.”

The Pharaoh averted his eyes, cheeks somehow redder than they had been all night. He would have moved to cover himself, but that damn restraint had him stuck for the time being. At least he no longer felt as though he was going to make a mess of his boxers before Seto even got around to touching him. The night certainly had been a rollercoaster in that respect.

“I… uh…” It was one of the few times the Pharaoh recalled seeing Seto truly speechless.

Mokuba covered his eyes with one hand. “Enjoy your _duel_ , big brother.”

“Every good duel begins with some light bondage,” said Kaiba, causing both Mokuba and the Pharaoh to cringe painfully. If this was Kaiba’s idea of making the situation less awkward, his social skills left much to be desired.

“I would like it on the record that I don’t agree with that statement,” the Pharaoh cut in, before resuming staring in shame at the dragon-shaped chalice on the bedside table.

“Big brother! Please, I don’t want to know about your bondage kink any more than I wanted to find that Blue Eyes White Dragon dil-”

“Get out, then!”

“I’m leaving, I’m leaving!” He darted out of the door and shut it tightly behind him. Then his muffled voice added, gloatingly, “Oh, and by the way, subtlety? Neither of your strong points. I’m just surprised it’s taken you this long to get round to it…”

Seto turned back to face the Pharaoh; both men wore the same rosy-cheeked expression of someone who had been called the fuck out and was trying to work out if their pride would allow them to embrace the situation regardless.

Seconds later, Seto had pounced on the Pharaoh and was covering him in furious kisses.


	6. Chapter 6

Still restrained, the Pharaoh watched as Seto drew back, his breathing heavy and uneven, and put himself between his thighs. His belts, trousers and boxers were strewn carelessly over the carpet, while the tatters of his tank top lay underneath him, crumpled and damp with sweat, after Seto had used an ivory dragon-handled knife to cut it off of him.

He took a moment to admire Seto’s naked body – long, sinewy limbs, almost as pale as the Blue Eyes dragon itself, in perfect contrast with the flushed cheeks under his striking blue eyes. His hand pulled against the cool chain as it tried to reach out to catch one of the beads of sweat running over his chiselled torso. The Pharaoh idly wondered when Kaiba had time to work out, when he always seemed so busy with his latest card game contraption.

The sight of his nude body for the first time, combined with the ferocity of the man’s kisses was almost too much for the Pharaoh to take.

“Please,” he heard himself whine, “let me…”

But Kaiba only smirked in response, and traced light fingernails down the Pharaoh’s chest. “I’ll give you your gratification, Pharaoh, but not quite yet.”

The Pharaoh nodded with ragged, moaning breaths. Patience. But Gods, his cock was aching – the most incredible, beautiful ache he’d ever experienced, but painful nonetheless.

Seto lowered his head, while his arms snaked their way under the Pharaoh’s back. The Pharaoh gave a little shiver as he felt the other’s warm breath just below his balls, quickly followed by hot, damp lips planting a flurry of kisses that ended up between his cheeks.

“Go-ods…”

He thought he heard Kaiba laugh to himself as his tongue began to tease at the Pharaoh’s ass; he certainly felt the vibrations of Kaiba’s voice. It was a beautiful sight to watch Seto’s scruffy mop of hair between his legs, in front of the graceful curve of his back – that is, when he could manage more than two seconds without scrunching his eyes closed at the pleasure of it all.

“Where did you learn...” But the Pharaoh trailed off mid-sentence. Did it matter where he’d learned to eat ass like this? Or suck dick like he did back on the balcony? Not in this moment, he decided, not when he was reaping the glorious benefits of however the hell Kaiba had become so good at all this.

Seto pulled up for air, wiped his mouth on his hand and flashed the Pharaoh the smuggest smile he’d seen on his face to date, which, considering that this was _Kaiba_ , was really quite a feat.

“We all have our secrets, Pharaoh,” he said as he leaned over towards the bedside table and pulled out a jar of lube. Surprisingly, it didn’t have anything relating to dragons on it.

The Pharaoh lay back to admire Seto’s glistening body as he rubbed lube up and down his admittedly large shaft, interrupting the rhythm of his breathing with little growls as he did, then made sure both of his hands were well lubricated before turning his full attention back to the Pharaoh.

“Now,” said Kaiba. “Now that you’re mine – now that I’ve seen you beg for it – I’m going to make you cum.”

He easily slid one finger into the Pharaoh’s ass with one hand, while slowly rubbing the other hand up and down the length of the Pharaoh’s cock; he bent down and kissed a drop of precum as it blossomed from the head, and the Pharaoh whimpered, convulsing as jolts of pleasure tingled throughout his pelvis.

“Mor-oh Gods, yes!”

Kaiba’s face remained as self-satisfied as ever as he appeased the Pharaoh with more fingers, but the glow from his cheeks at least made his expression warmer than usual. The Pharaoh’s hips were twitching wildly beneath him, battling with the slow pace Kaiba had set with his hands, towards the orgasm he’d been denied all evening.

Kaiba slowly removed his fingers, then aligned himself with the Pharaoh’s hips. “Damn it, if you want me to fuck you, you’re going to have to hold still just for a moment.”

Despite the intense surge of lust inspired by those words, the Pharaoh managed to control himself just long enough for Kaiba to penetrate him; both men moaned loudly in unison, and began a frantic rhythm with their hips, while Seto pumped at the Pharaoh’s cock.

Finally the Pharaoh’s dick pulsed in Seto’s hand, and he damn near screamed as thick strings of cum shot over his tanned chest and over his shoulder into his tangled hair. _This_ was what he’d been waiting for. _This_ was what he’d desperately wanted for who knows how long without realising it. Years of frustration released in one, earth-shattering orgasm. He felt his eyelids flutter as his body shuddered and writhed onto Kaiba.

“Pharaoh…” Seto’s voice seemed strangely vulnerable. If they weren’t the only two people in the room, it would almost have sounded like someone else speaking. The Pharaoh felt nails dig into the flesh of his ass, and Kaiba began to spasm and shake inside him.

“Pharaoh, I…” Seto trailed off with a chain of incoherent growls. “I love you.” He collapsed onto the Pharaoh’s chest, kissing away the fluids as he did.

There was a long, heavy moment of silence while they both caught their breath and fell back down to reality, curled up in one another’s arms.

“Uh, what was that, Kaiba?”

“What was… what?” His cheeks were a deep red, but his expression was defiant.

“Your voice is catching in your throat like it did when I summoned Exodia.” The Pharaoh laughed, but Seto seemed to shrink into the sheets instead of coming back with his own barb, and the Pharaoh sighed softly to himself. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you should leave,” said Kaiba, extricating his long arm from beneath the Pharaoh before rolling over.

“In this state?” The Pharaoh tried to comb through a tuft of purple hair with his fingers, but they quickly got caught in a sticky, tangled knot.

“I _suppose_ you could take a shower first.”

The Pharaoh felt his heart sinking. He didn’t know what he was expecting from this liaison, but this wasn’t it. The euphoria of flirting with suppressed desire had been replaced by a sort of empty disappointment.

“I…” The Pharaoh felt his own voice catch in his throat now. He almost hated himself for what he was going to say next. “I had a good time tonight. If you ever want another duel over cocktails, well… I won’t say no.”

Seto sat himself upright, glaring in the Pharaoh’s general direction. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what you think it means?” He slid himself off the bed and bent down to gather his clothes. He was starting to feel very exposed, and Kaiba’s piercing gaze wasn’t helping.

“Hmph,” Seto grunted, watching the Pharaoh awkwardly pull clothes on as quickly as he could manage. “Why is it that no matter _how_ I try to beat you, you always manage to come out on top?”

“I don’t think-” _I was on top for any of that_ , the sentence was going to go, but this time the Pharaoh had the sense to keep the words to himself.

“Damn you. I wish you’d never come.”

The Pharaoh buttoned up his fly, but left the belts for the time being. He cocked his head to one side, trying to keep his eyes from roaming all over that perfect body curled up grumpily on the creased sheets in front of him.

“You said-”

“We both know what I said.”

Nodding, the Pharaoh admitted, “Yes, that’s true. It was just… unexpected, that’s all.”

Seto sat up and pulled the covers over his legs. His head was bowed, and his fingers were hard at work smoothing out every last fibre of the soft blanket cocooning him.

“What did you expect?” he asked softly.

This gentler form of his voice would take some getting used to; it seemed to catch the Pharaoh off guard every time.

“I don’t know.” The Pharaoh chuckled, still only half dressed. “I thought you wanted to duel. I thought you _always_ wanted to duel. That’s what you fill my inbox with, anyway – that, and every drunkenly-misspelled taunt you can think of.”

Seto’s head seemed to sink even further down. “Yes, well. I suppose it should have been obvious that there was a reason that _you_ were always on the receiving end of those messages. You occupied my thoughts far more than you had any right to, and when I’d had a few drinks…” He paused, then finally brought his eyes up to meet the Pharaoh’s quizzical gaze. “Today I finally admitted to myself what I’d felt for all this time, and messaged you when I was sober for once. I never thought you’d actually reply.”

The Pharaoh stepped towards Seto, then sat down at the end of the bed, at what he hoped was a respectful distance. “As soon as I realised I had, uh, _miscalculated_ , I thought you just wanted sex.” At Kaiba’s raised eyebrow, he quickly added, “Not, of course, that I took issue with that. You are…” He trailed off, but his eyes ran hungrily over Seto’s exposed chest.

“Look, I won’t tell anyone about tonight if you don’t.” He saw the Pharaoh’s mouth open, but cut him off. “It shouldn’t be hard to keep Mokuba quiet, either. I’ll just bribe him, or threaten to have him kidnapped or something.”

The Pharaoh had to smile at that. The real Kaiba was starting to come back.

“That won’t be necessary. I’m not em – well, I’m a little embarrassed, but not for the reason you think.” He gave a wry smile. “I was so adamant to prove to Yuugi that we were _duelling_ , not dating, that it’s going to hurt when I get back and he greets me with _I told you so_.”

“Yuugi read the message I sent?” Seto asked quietly, and the Pharaoh wasn’t sure if the tone of his voice signified confusion or danger. Perhaps the latter, if the lines in his brow were anything to go by.

“Could I maybe have that sh-” The Pharaoh quickly stopped talking at Seto’s glare. “Look, sometimes I don’t understand your modern-day slang. I thought that ‘D’ stood for duel, but I have seen – multiple times – tonight that I was quite mistaken.”

Seto’s resolve at being mad at the Pharaoh finally broke, and he laughed. “I have to admit, that’s pretty funny. You really are a dork.”

“Well, after what you said earlier, perhaps that says more about you.”

“Let’s just get ourselves cleaned up,” huffed Seto, but the Pharaoh noted there was a new sparkle to his eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

The shower was just across the corridor, a large wetroom attached to a gleaming, modern bathroom with white tiled walls and a pale, sparkly blue floor. Seto had grabbed a couple of towels, then ushered the Pharaoh through the door and locked it carefully behind them, after dashing through the corridor with one towel over his crotch and the other barely covering his ass.

“Nice colour scheme,” remarked the Pharaoh, pulling his trousers back down and draping them, neatly folded, over the side of the bathtub.

There was a distinct pink tinge to Kaiba’s ears, but he said nothing in response. He set the towels neatly outside the shower, then turned it on and climbed inside. The Pharaoh waited patiently outside as steam began to fill the room, until Seto poked his head around the doorway.

“Aren’t you going to join me?” He smirked, and reached out to a particularly sticky clump of the Pharaoh’s hair. “Since I’m the one who did this to you, it’s only fair that I help you clean up.”

Gingerly, the Pharaoh stepped forward. The steam and heat from the water was already starting to make him feel dizzy – or was that just the effect of the streams of water dripping over Kaiba’s body, accentuating every angle? He gave an involuntary shiver as Seto’s damp fingers ran down his arms and drew him into the hot water.

“I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t read you right now, Kaiba.” He closed his eyes and allowed the warm water from the showerhead on the ceiling to run all through his hair and over his face. It was exactly what his tired, aching body needed.

“What makes you say that?”

The Pharaoh felt a pair of hands running over his hair as it lay flat to his head. He opened his eyes, blinked away the water, and said, “I can’t tell if I’ve upset you, or if you’re just being Seto Kaiba.”

“Hmph,” came Kaiba’s grumpy response. “What does that mean?”

“ _That’s_ what I mean,” the Pharaoh said, grinning. “Are you offended, or is that just how you talk?”

The Pharaoh supposed that his raised eyebrow and the slight snarl of his lips meant that he was offended, but Seto only grunted in response, then reached for a bottle of shampoo. He seemed to squirt it into his hands and lather it up with such malice that the Pharaoh winced when he began to rub it into the matted purple hair clinging to his head and shoulders.

“How does your hair even work?” asked Seto, as he massaged the fruit-scented foam into it. “Does it just go poof as soon as it dries?”

“Pretty much.” The Pharaoh had never really thought about it before, but now that he mentioned it, Seto barely looked any different with wet hair tumbling across his face whereas he could almost have passed for an entirely different person.

Kaiba washed the shampoo carefully out of the Pharaoh’s hair, making sure not to get a single drop in his eyes. It was jarring to have Seto Kaiba of all people being so gentle with him, but after the night they’d had it was just what the Pharaoh needed. He stepped forward and Kaiba’s arms wrapped all the way around him. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he rested his head on Seto’s chest, closed his eyes again, and just appreciated the hot streams of water flowing between their pressed-together bodies.

A short while later, Seto rubbed some conditioner into the Pharaoh’s hair and combed it through; the Pharaoh could have fallen asleep on his feet, leaning into the other man’s arms as he massaged his head – that is, if a renewed sense of desire hadn’t crept up on him so quickly.

He felt Seto’s chest shake as a derisive chuckle reached his ears. He looked up to meet Kaiba’s smug gaze.

“I think, Pharaoh, it’s late…” He stroked one of the soft blonde highlights and traced a finger down the Pharaoh’s cheek until it reached the bottom of his chin. Narrowing his eyes as he looked over the Pharaoh’s flushed body, he said, “I can see how much you want more, but I suppose I’m just going to have to make you wait.”

“Wait? Until…?”

“Next time I invite you for a duel over cocktails, of course.” He put an uncharacteristically nervous hand behind his head. “Next time I’ll skip the, uh, _modern-day slang_ though – I don’t want you showing _all_ my messages to Yuugi.”

“Kaiba, I-”

But Seto shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything, especially if you don’t mean it. I will admit, though, that even if those foolish words were spoken mid-orgasm, I did mean them.” He made to turn off the shower, then stared at the droplets of red dripping onto the floor, blossoming outwards like ink. He gave a satisfied smile. “What’s up Pharaoh, daydreaming about me having you up against the shower wall?”

“No comment.”

The Pharaoh made a hasty exit from the shower, then went to wash his face in the sink. Seto followed him shortly afterwards and tossed him a towel.

“Wow,” said Seto, watching as the Pharaoh thoroughly dried himself. “It really does go poof, doesn’t it?”


	8. Chapter 8

“Pharaoh…? That you?” Through the darkness, the Pharaoh watched a half-asleep Yuugi reach out towards the thin air in the bed next to him.

“Sorry, I was trying not to wake you.”

Maybe Mokuba was right – subtlety and stealth really weren’t his strong points, especially at four in the morning when those cocktails were still noticeably pumping through his body.

“So?” Yuugi’s voice was far too chirpy as he fumbled around for the light switch. “How was your _duel_?”

“Why does everyone keep saying it like that?” grumbled the Pharaoh, shielding his eyes as the bright bedside lamp flicked on.

“You’ve been out for hours, Pharaoh. You must have really _wiped the floor with him_.”

“Stop making everything sound like a sexual innuendo!” The Pharaoh sat on the edge of the bed, flustered, while Yuugi sat up, grinning pointedly at him.

“Alright, alright,” pouted Yuugi. “Are you coming to bed?”

The Pharaoh nodded, then undid his jacket and let it slip down his bare shoulders and back. Yuugi practically squealed, pointing an accusing finger at the distinct lack of black tank top. Blushing, the Pharaoh tossed his jacket onto the desk chair, and rose to his feet to peel off the rest of his clothes.

“Fine, Yuugi – you win. You were right. We _did_ duel, but I must admit that was not the focus of the evening.” He cleared his throat. “At all.”

Despite the cosy pyjamas and his wide, innocent eyes, Yuugi managed to twist his lips into a smug smirk that could easily have rivalled Kaiba’s.

“Why are you smiling like that, Yuugi? You don’t even _like_ the guy that much.”

“He can be an asshole, yes,” admitted Yuugi, “but he’s our _friend_ – an asshole that we’ve all come to know and love. Kind of. Perhaps _some_ more than others.”

“Now you’re being the asshole. It’s stupid o’clock in the morning – can’t a Pharaoh get some rest?”

Yuugi pulled up the duvet and patted the space next to him. The Pharaoh crawled into it and Yuugi instantly snuggled into him. He smiled, stroked the boy’s wild purple hair, and wrapped protective arms around him.

“You do realise, Pharaoh, that I’m not going to let this go until you tell me what happened between the two of you?” Yuugi whispered into his chest. “So you might as well get it over with now.” He drew back just far enough to meet the Pharaoh’s eyes, before planting a gentle kiss on his lips. He stopped suddenly. “Have you been drinking?”

“It turns out Seto is quite partial to cocktails. I, uh, may have indulged in a few myself.”

“So he took you to a bar, did he? Was it fancy? Did he get all romantic? Granted, I can’t imagine Kaiba doing that, but…”

The Pharaoh hesitated. Seto would probably have him murdered if he told Yuugi about all the candles, and the balcony, and… Oh Gods, the balcony. His teasing fingers. His warm mouth. Now those were memories a man could get lost in.

Yuugi calmly reached over his partner to the bedside table and grabbed a tissue. Dabbing at the Pharaoh’s nose, he said, “That good, was it?”

Yuugi’s words brought him crashing back down to reality. “Good. Yes. It was.” He barely felt able to speak.

They were both silent for a moment. The Pharaoh scanned Yuugi’s face, trying to work out what he might be thinking. Perhaps he was losing his touch, he thought. He couldn’t read Yuugi that night either.

“I’m glad you had fun,” said Yuugi, then kissed the Pharaoh again before turning the light back out.

There was a moment of silence.

“Yuugi?”

“What’s up, Pharaoh?”

“I love you.” He sighed, pulling Yuugi close, wrinkling his nose as a stray strand of blonde tickled him. “I’m so happy to have you in my arms again.”

“It was a little lonely without you,” Yuugi admitted sleepily. “The bed was unusually cold and spacious. It felt wrong.”

“I just want you to know that although I enjoyed seeing Kaiba far more than I expected to – because who _would_ have expected-”

“I’ve had a bet on with Mokuba for months on when you’d finally have sex, Pharaoh.” Yuugi cleared his throat. “But please, continue. Sorry.”

“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t know how my relationship with Seto will change as we move forward, but you will always be something special to me, aibou. Partner, soul mate, lover… I don’t have the words to express what you are to me.”

“If you think I’m jealous of Seto Kaiba,” Yuugi began, with a derisive chuckle, “you’re wrong.” He lifted his head, and brushed the Pharaoh’s soft highlights away from his face. “But it’s nice to hear you say those things out loud all the same.”

Smiling, the Pharaoh drew him closer, and their lips met in a flurry of sweet kisses. Yuugi’s fingers wandered gently over the lean silhouette of the Pharaoh’s body, as though reminding themselves of its shape. The kisses grew deeper. The Pharaoh’s hands found their way inside Yuugi’s pyjama top and up his back.

“I thought you wanted to rest?” came Yuugi’s whispered words between kisses.

“I do.” The Pharaoh pulled back for air. “I just… have a lot of feelings at the moment.”

“Feelings?” Yuugi said. “You mean those _feelings_ that are poking against my leg?”

“ _No_ , Yuugi, although yes, perhaps I have a lot of those too,” he said, trying not to spoil the moment by rolling his eyes. “All I want right now is to enjoy being close to you. ‘Feelings’ aside, I’m… almost overwhelmed by affection.”

Yuugi’s mouth nearly dropped at that. “Well, I suppose I’d better make the most of this before you go back to being serious and unemotional all the time.”

“What does that mean?” the Pharaoh asked, before coming to the disturbing realisation that he was far more like Kaiba than he cared to admit.

But Yuugi just shushed him with more soft kisses, and the Pharaoh allowed himself to melt into his soul mate’s embrace. Yuugi’s touches were gentler, sweeter than Kaiba’s, but they had their own kind of intensity. And, as much as the Pharaoh disliked the vulnerability in admitting it, the way that he and Yuugi knew each other having once shared a body meant that every moment they spent in bed was pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

When finally they settled down to sleep together, safe in each other’s arms, the sun was already beginning to peek over the horizon and sneak in through the gap in the curtains, but both were so tired that it didn’t matter.


	9. Chapter 9

Yuugi was up to something. The Pharaoh could tell from the sweet, secret little smile that fluttered over his face every time he thought he wasn’t looking, and the fact he’d been texting someone all through their gaming session that afternoon. The Pharaoh narrowed his eyes at him over another bad poker hand, before finally giving in.

“So, who is it that’s had half your attention while we’ve been playing?” The Pharaoh’s attempt at nonchalance was an indisputable failure. He cleared his throat, then added, “If you don’t focus, you’re going to lose again, and I’ll have to think of yet another forfeit for you.”

“I was just messaging Ryou about our D&D game later.” Yuugi’s voice was slow and even, as though he’d picked his words very carefully. “And don’t worry about having to think of a forfeit, Pharaoh – I won’t lose this round.” He smirked, but there was an almost imperceptible nervousness to him that suggested he was bluffing.

“Anything worth sharing, or are you just flirting outrageously with him again?”

Yuugi’s cheeks flushed a deep red, but he didn’t deny it.

The Pharaoh couldn’t resist poking further. “You’ve liked the guy ever since you first laid eyes on him.” He put his hands under his chin and did his best impersonation of a love-struck Yuugi. “ _Ryou Bakura…_ ”

“Are you still sore at me for teasing you about Seto? Is that it?” Yuugi’s eyebrow was raised, almost as if he were challenging the Pharaoh to deny it. “Oh, and speaking of Seto, I invited him along to the game tonight to make up numbers. I hope you don’t mind.”

The Pharaoh nearly dropped his cards. “You… You did what?”

Yuugi calmly tossed another chip onto the table. “Well, since Jonouchi and Ryuuji are away this weekend – I’m surprised you’re not joining them, actually, with your newly-discovered taste for cocktails – Ryou thought it would be more fun to invite another friend to join us.”

“And you chose Seto Kaiba, of all people? And he said yes?”

Yuugi broke out into an enormous grin. “Why not? And of course he said yes – the game is called Dungeons and _Dragons_ after all.”

“You _know_ why not, Yuugi!” The Pharaoh blustered. “You’d better not have mentioned anything to Ryou about our… you know. Besides, I haven’t replied to his text yet from the morning after.”

“Can’t even bring yourself to say the word _date_ , huh? Don’t worry, your secret’s safe for now,” Yuugi teased, but then frowned. “Why didn’t you reply?”

The Pharaoh waved a dismissive hand as he saw Yuugi’s bet, then revealed the next card. _Damn_. He still had nothing to speak of in his hand. “I wasn’t sure what to say. I need more time. Or… something like that.”

“Well, you’ve got…” Yuugi looked at the studded leather wrapped around his wrist for effect, despite the distinct lack of a watch. “Two hours at least, before we’re expected at Ryou’s place.”

“What am I supposed to say to him? Damn you, Yuugi.”

Yuugi tossed another chip onto the pile in the centre, and stared the Pharaoh down with wide, intense eyes. “Why don’t you invite him to a rematch of your _duel_?” Somehow, he managed to maintain an almost perfectly straight face; the only thing that could possibly give away his amusement was the sparkle in his eye.

Looking back down at his cards, the Pharaoh gave what he hoped was a confident smirk, then saw Yuugi’s bet and raised it by another two chips.

“But seriously, Pharaoh, just text him. Both of you are _hopeless_ , I swear – it’s not a sign of weakness to text someone back after enjoying a date with them.” Yuugi met the Pharaoh’s bet with a slight wince.

The Pharaoh flipped the final card over, the two of clubs.

“You know what, Pharaoh – you may as well do your worst with that forfeit.” Yuugi put his hand down on the table with a sigh. “I’ve got nothing but a pair of twos.”

 _Gods damn it_. “Looks like I’ll be the one taking the forfeit this time.”

Yuugi laughed as the Pharaoh spread his worthless cards in front of him, then said, “Oh, then this will be easy – your forfeit is to reply to Seto’s text within the next ten minutes, or _I_ will do it for you.”

“At one time I would have challenged you to a Shadow Game for this,” the Pharaoh grumbled, and quickly pulled out his phone.

There were actually multiple messages on his phone from Seto. The first was a simple (though somewhat out of character) _Hope you got home safely,_ sent just after the Pharaoh had left Kaiba’s mansion. The next was from the morning after, reiterating that he’d had a good time and asking if the Pharaoh would meet him again sometime the following week. Then had come a barrage of messages late at night, which were back to the usual format of drunkenly-mistyped taunts and invitations to duel, albeit with a lot more unsubtle sexual innuendo.

Finally, there was a message that read, _Did you lie when you said you had fun last night?_ It brought pangs of guilt to the Pharaoh’s chest every time he saw it – and made him wonder why Seto hadn’t hacked into his phone somehow to delete it, an embarrassing text message like that.

The Pharaoh spent a good five minutes reading through the messages again, while Yuugi shuffled the deck of cards and pretended he wasn’t watching out of the corner of his eye.

“Yuugi,” he said through gritted teeth, glaring upwards, “I know that it’s hard to set boundaries with someone after sharing a body for years, but would you _please_ just leave me to do this in peace?”

Yuugi’s cheeks instantly began to burn, and he laid the cards on the table. “Okay Pharaoh,” he said, standing up. “I’ll take my character sheet and go for a walk. I’m… I’m sorry.”

There were many things the Pharaoh wanted to say to Kaiba. Lots of them were some variation on _you make my nose bleed so often I’ll need a transfusion by the end of the week_. But some of them were more troubling, like what did Seto really want from him? Had he really meant those three drunken words, whispered in the midst of passion? But as he sat staring at the message screen on his phone, he couldn’t bring himself to type any of those things.

Just as he was on the verge of giving up, the phone vibrated in his hand with a new message from Seto. He jumped violently, guiltily, before reading the words.

_Looks like we’ll be seeing each other tonight… I won’t make it weird if you don’t. Unless you want me to, that is._

A slow smile spread across the Pharaoh’s face at the inherent challenge in Seto’s words, and he finally found the inspiration to reply. Some things never changed, and the Pharaoh’s love of twisted games was one of them.


	10. Chapter 10

“You look fine,” said Yuugi, as he caught the Pharaoh checking out his reflection yet again in the front door to Ryou’s apartment building. He’d convinced him to step outside of his comfort zone and wear a black shirt in place of his usual black tank top, but the Pharaoh couldn’t seem to stop adjusting it in every reflective surface he walked past.

The Pharaoh simply grumbled to himself as he pressed the buzzer, and smoothed his blonde fringe to one side with one last nod at his own pretty reflection.

Ryou came to let them in, looking unusually flustered. “Ah, you’ve brought wine,” he said, eyeing the large bags of drinks and snacks that Yuugi was carrying. “Good. Do come in – Seto’s been here for half an hour already. There’s only so much I can take of thinly-veiled boasting disguised as detailed monologues about the latest in duelling technology.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realise we were late,” said the Pharaoh as they stepped into the tiled corridor. “It certainly wasn’t Yuugi’s fault for taking ages to get his eyeliner just perfect.”

“Oh, sure,” said Yuugi sarcastically, but he blushed slightly. “Just like it definitely wasn’t the Pharaoh trying to decide between three identical black shirts that delayed us for so long.”

Ryou chuckled, shaking his head at their familiar bickering.

He led the way up two flights of stairs and into his small apartment. There was a large coffee table in the centre of the living room, with a screen, piles of notes and dice already set up at one end and miniature models of their characters lovingly placed in front of their usual seats. “Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable, while I get you some drinks?”

“I’ll help,” said Yuugi quickly, as Ryou started towards the kitchen. He gave the Pharaoh a very unsubtle and surprisingly painful poke in the ribs before hurrying after Ryou.

Seto Kaiba was sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, one long leg stretched out before him while the other was bent upwards at just the right height to comfortably rest his drinking hand on. He watched all of this unfold with one raised eyebrow.

“Kaiba,” said the Pharaoh stiffly, nodding his head in acknowledgement. His feet refused to move for some reason – it couldn’t be that he was nervous about seeing Kaiba, or that, Gods forbid, he couldn’t stop thinking about the last time they’d seen each other. No, he was just inexplicably frozen to the floor in a perfectly dignified manner.

Seto leaned forward and placed his nearly empty glass of red wine on the coffee table next to a neatly stacked set of dice. Then he stood up slowly, looking at the Pharaoh with intense blue eyes and a cocky smile on his face, before moving towards him.

“The shirt looks good on you,” he said in a low voice, and traced a gentle finger over the buttons on the Pharaoh’s chest. The Pharaoh felt an instant rush of blood to his cheeks – and elsewhere, as Seto’s hand moved downwards, flirting with the buckle on his belt before dropping back to his side. He leaned down and spoke into his ear, “It would look pretty nice on the floor, too.”

The Pharaoh felt the brief warmth of Seto’s lips nibbling at his earlobe, then the tickle of his breath as he withdrew. It was a terrible pick-up line, but the prickle of the hairs on the back of his neck said that his body didn’t care. He stared at Seto as he bent down to pick up his wine as though nothing had happened, then stole a glance in the direction of the kitchen.

He stepped forward, grabbed a handful of Kaiba’s shirt and pulled the other man’s lips frantically into his own. He could hear the faint sound of Yuugi trying to seduce an oblivious Ryou in the other room, and, since they were safely distracted, allowed himself to melt into Seto with an intensity that surprised even him.

“Patience, Pharaoh,” said Seto, pulling back. “It won’t be any fun if they walk in on us now… Besides, you know I’d never give you what you want _that_ easily.”

The Pharaoh nodded, and swatted Seto’s wandering fingers away from his thigh. “Fine. Let me get you a refill, then.”

He didn’t know how Seto Kaiba had managed to get under his skin quite so much, but even the briefest meeting of their fingers as Seto handed over his glass sent tingling jolts of excitement all through him. Nobody else elicited such an intense mixture of conflicting emotions, that much was certain. He still wasn’t sure if he just wanted to hatefuck the guy over another card game, or if there was something more.

Still, he thought, opening the door to the kitchen, it couldn’t hurt to explore… and Gods was he impatient to explore some more. He paused in the doorway as sharp memories of being restrained in Seto’s bed flushed through him, then reminded himself where he was.

“Are the two of you going to finish pouring yourselves some drinks already?” asked the Pharaoh pointedly, as he caught Yuugi leaning close to Ryou with what looked like a half-empty glass in his hand.

Yuugi started at the Pharaoh’s voice, then took a guilty sip from his drink, before clumsily turning back to the counter-top where he’d presumably abandoned the wine he was pouring as soon as Ryou had spoken to him.

“I’m sorry for keeping Yuugi distracted for so long,” said Ryou. He picked up the whistling kettle from the stove, and poured some boiling water into a teapot. “I was just waiting for the kettle to boil. I think we learned quite well last time that dungeon masters shouldn’t drink too much wine.”

The Pharaoh smirked in response. It was one of the few times he’d seen Bakura drunk, and it had certainly made their party’s encounter with the bandit king more interesting last session (“Noth’na do w’ _that_ bandit king,” he’d slurred, when someone had made a tasteless joke about Bakura’s alter ego nearly imprisoning all of their souls in roleplay miniatures). He was secretly hoping that Ryou had forgotten just how generous he’d been with loot towards the end of the evening, but he wasn’t banking on it. Yuugi was too sweet and honest – and not to mention forever trying to get on Ryou’s good side – not to have reminded him already.

“Are you sure you don’t want just one more glass, Bakura?” said Yuugi with wide, deceptively innocent eyes.

“I know your game, Yuugi,” said Ryou, grinning. “You just know that I give away too much loot when I’ve had a couple of drinks.”

The Pharaoh suppressed another smirk. He couldn’t decide whether he felt more sorry for Ryou, who seemed so painfully unaware of Yuugi practically throwing himself at him, or for Yuugi, who put so much effort into this doomed crush of his. _Unless…_ He looked from Ryou to Yuugi and back again. Perhaps Seto wasn’t the only one he could play with tonight.

“You should really keep an eye on Yuugi,” said the Pharaoh, as he brushed past him to top up Seto’s glass from the open bottle of red on the counter-top. “Perhaps an inadvisable number of gold pieces isn’t all he wants.”

“Pharaoh!” The momentary flash of panic in Yuugi’s expression might have been funny if the Pharaoh didn’t have the distinct impression he’d be paying for it later.

Bakura picked up his teapot, with a quizzical expression on his face. “I’d better get back to my notes and have a quick read through before we start.”

“Come on Yuugi,” he replied once Ryou was safely out of earshot. “We both know he’s never going to notice how much you like him without a bit more… prompting.”

“This is revenge, isn’t it?” Yuugi said, taking a large swig of his drink. “For inviting Kaiba without asking you.”

“Not _revenge_ … More like a game, let’s say.”

“I’m starting to have flashbacks to people burning to death. You sure you’re feeling okay, Pharaoh?”

“You don’t smoke, and you don’t want to kill me. That would never work on-”

“Uh… Not the most comforting thing you could have said there, but okay.”

The Pharaoh raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you’re right. But you know that I could never bear to hurt you.”

Yuugi gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “So what’s this totally-not-a-shadow-game you’re hinting at?”

“Well, if you’re going to amuse yourself with seeing just how unsubtle you can be about Seto, I’m going to do the same with Ryou.” He gave an unnerving smile, and brushed a stray blonde curl out of Yuugi’s face. “Fair, don’t you think, aibou?”


	11. Chapter 11

Back in the living room, Ryou was already buried under a pile of handwritten notes, hefty rulebooks and colourful folders, muttering to himself as he got everything in just the right place to run the game as smoothly as possible. Yuugi put a large glass of red wine next to his teapot and the d20-shaped mug he liked to drink out of, and sat down as close to his position at the head of the table as he could without being able to see behind the DM’s screen.

Seto was back to lounging at the opposite end of the table to Bakura, idly playing with his dice again. As the Pharaoh put his drink down next to a neat stack of gaming dice, he noted their blue and white colour scheme. He had no idea why every predictable reference to Kaiba’s obsession with the Blue Eyes White Dragon made his heart beat so damn fast, but there he was, carefully measuring every movement as he sat down so as not to let on how weak his knees felt.

He was sitting opposite Yuugi, where Ryuuji usually sat. It felt strange not being next to his partner for their gaming session, but with Kaiba to his right with that cocky expression on his infuriatingly pretty face, the Pharaoh was certain that this would be no usual gaming session.

“What are you playing as?” the Pharaoh asked, picking up the little figurine that Ryou had painstakingly painted of Seto’s character. It looked a lot like Kaiba himself, but was wearing silver armour with a seven-pointed blue star on the chest.

“I’m the Unnamed Priest of Vengeance. I murdered my heretic family and I’m on a mission to purge the world of evil.” Seto delivered these two sentences as though he had just drawn the exact Duel Monsters card he needed to pull off the perfect combination to beat someone.

The Pharaoh’s eyebrows raised and he tried to prevent his lips from curling into a smile; he failed miserably.

“What’s so funny, dork?”

“I shouldn’t laugh – what else would I have expected from you, Seto?” The Pharaoh passed back the little figurine, and grabbed his own from across the table. He was an elven rogue, adept at sleight of hand and trickery, and often disguised himself as the darker counterpart to Yuugi’s wizard. Jonouchi favoured a half-orc barbarian – not the brightest, but he was good at hitting things – while Ryuuji was the charismatic, gambling-addicted bard, the face of the party. He wondered where Kaiba’s edgelord would fit into their established dynamic – most likely in a similar way to how the real Kaiba fit into their friendship group.

Seto grunted and took a sip from his drink, then shuffled up close to the table. His right hand was busy stroking at the delicate stem of the wine glass, while his left seemed unable to decide on whether it should be touching the Pharaoh or not. It hovered just shy of him for the time being.

Ryou cleared his throat, and shuffled the papers in his hands dramatically. “So, are you all ready to start?”

The three players murmured their assent, making sure everything was laid out in front of them – dice, miniatures, character sheets, and, in Yuugi’s case, a novella-length backstory.

Seto’s indecisive hand quickly made up its mind; it had found its way to the Pharaoh’s thigh and was dancing around his fly, all while its owner appeared perfectly engrossed in the character sheet in front of him. They were only just starting, and already he was uncomfortably hard, confined again by his cursedly tight trousers, and fighting to keep his eager hips still and planted firmly on the cushion beneath him.

Ryou set the scene as the party found themselves in a dark network of caves following their attack on the bandit king’s lair. Jonouchi and Ryuuji’s characters had conveniently headed off down a different path, back to a nearby town with the rescued mayor’s daughter, while Yuugi and the Pharaoh made sure that none of the bandit king’s henchmen were still around to cause trouble.

Although the caves seemed empty of bandits for the time being, they quickly did run into trouble – in the form of Kaiba creeping through the caves towards them.

“I hide in the shadows for now,” said the Pharaoh, inhaling sharply as Kaiba’s hand brushed against his. He steadfastly ignored Yuugi’s widened eyes as Ryou instructed him to roll for stealth. Just as he held the twenty-sided die over the table, Seto’s fingers traced back down over the crinkles in his trousers, and he shivered, dropping the die clumsily onto his character sheet. It rolled all across the table and came to land in front of Yuugi, who immediately stifled a laugh.

“Very stealthy indeed, Pharaoh,” said Yuugi, gesturing towards the result on the die.

One. Critical failure. _Gods damn it._

“You try to lurk in the shadows,” said Ryou, “but the ground is wet and slippery and catches you unawares. You’re not hiding from anyone, I’m afraid.”

“Alright, then I steady myself with as much dignity as I can muster and ask the priest what his business is.” He raised an eyebrow pointedly at Seto, whose hand was still resting achingly close to the bulge beneath his belt.

Kaiba flashed a smug smile at the Pharaoh, and said, with a perfectly even voice, “I heard that there were men down here who reject the ways of the Dragon Lord – and they stole an artefact from my temple. I came to take it back, that’s all.” He narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?”

“No, I…” But the Pharaoh trailed off, mesmerised by the intense blue gaze fixed on him. His body felt hot all over as he remembered the last time Seto had looked at him like that, while he lay helplessly restrained on the bed.

“Are you quite alright, Pharaoh?” asked Ryou, passing over a box of tissues. “It looks like your nose is bleeding.”

“Oh, he’s just _excited_ to be playing the game with Kaiba for once,” cut in Yuugi, before telling Seto, in character, that they thought they’d cleared the caves of bandits but hadn’t come across anything that seemed particularly valuable.

The Pharaoh dabbed at his nose, hiding from Yuugi’s barely concealed amusement, while Seto managed to restrain himself for long enough to come to an arrangement with Yuugi to find the artefact, the Sapphire Eye of the Dragon.

Just as they made off back through the cave towards the bandit king’s lair, in case they had missed something before, Seto heard the sound of footsteps around the corner (Yuugi and the Pharaoh rolled poorly for perception and heard only the underground stream flowing nearby).

“Stop – I hear someone coming,” said Seto.

“How do we know you’re telling us the truth?” asked the Pharaoh, having recovered slightly from Kaiba’s touch. “What if you’re leading us into a trap?”

(Roll for insight – natural two – _Are these dice fucking loaded?_ )

“I’ll lead the way,” said Seto, “drawing my sword.”

The phallic imagery wasn’t lost on the Pharaoh’s one-track mind. He hoped Seto would draw his sword and lead the way later, when they were alone. _If_ they got to be alone. They’d exchanged a few texts before meeting at Ryou’s place, but it was all trash talk and bravado. The Pharaoh had no idea what Kaiba really wanted, and it both frustrated and excited him in equal measure.

He wriggled uncomfortably on the floor, wishing he had learned from the other night’s duel – the word _date_ still didn’t seem right, somehow – and worn something looser. He tried to subtly flex the muscles in his thighs in the hope of some relief from the blood pooling between them, but all it did was cause his loose belt to rub against the head of his cock through the tight fabric of his trousers. Seto watched with an air of satisfaction as the blushing Pharaoh bit his own lip to keep quiet.

Ryou, blissfully unaware of any of this, grinned at the three others from behind his screen, and for a moment he looked unnervingly like the spirit of the ring. “Well, well – it looks like you’d all better roll initiative.”

After two gruelling waves of ambushing bandits, the Pharaoh and Yuugi had managed to convince a reluctant Kaiba to let them keep one of them alive for questioning – he was having far too much fun with that imaginary sword – and Ryou was out of tea.

“I’d better put the kettle on while you work out how to handle this,” said Bakura, picking up his teapot and making towards the kitchen.

Yuugi noted that his wine was mostly untouched. He drained what was left in his own glass. “I’ll join you, and top myself up.”

“You’re distracting me terribly, Kaiba,” said the Pharaoh quietly, as soon as the others were safely out of the room.

“Oh, I know.” If that self-satisfied smirk had been on anyone else’s face, the Pharaoh would have been tempted to slap them. “You can’t pretend that you’re not enjoying it, though. How long do you give it before Bakura figures it out, and you have to swallow your pride and admit to everyone that you let me fuck you?”

“You’ll have to do a lot better before that happens, Kaiba – but by all means, go ahead and try. _And I mean that_.” He took a sip from his glass, with cheeks almost as red as the wine. “It just doesn’t seem fair, is all, for this to be so one-sided.” Briefly glancing towards the kitchen door, he added, “But we can always change that.”

The Pharaoh inched closer with a grin of his own. He shuffled forwards until he was straddling Kaiba, then ran a finger through his surprisingly soft hair. He leaned in slowly, past the glowing pink cheeks, and brought his lips to meet Kaiba’s neck, just below his ear. He felt Seto shiver slightly beneath him, and gently rocked his hips back and forth, well aware that he was winding himself up as much as anyone else.

He opened his mouth and nibbled at the soft skin of Kaiba’s neck, breathing in the subtle scent of the shampoo they’d used in the shower together. The memories of their naked bodies pressed together under the hot streams of water made him tingle all the more. As a powerful surge of lust took hold of him, he bit down, eliciting a delicious, guttural moan.

Long fingers wove their way between the Pharaoh’s explosion of hair, grabbed hold of it and tugged his head back.

“I think you’ve made your point, Pharaoh.” Seto pulled him close for a quick, violent kiss, then pushed him off. “I’ve got an important business meeting on Monday – you’d better not have left a mark.”

“Your jacket has a high collar,” was the Pharaoh’s teasing response. “You’ll be fine.”

“Hmph.” Seto drank the rest of his wine. “So, are we going to have a rematch of our duel after this? Or are we going to skip straight to the-”

Yuugi cleared his throat as he swept in, putting the bottle of red wine in the middle of the table. The Pharaoh refilled his and Seto’s glasses, while Ryou sipped happily at a fresh cup of tea.

“Skip straight to the what, now?” asked Yuugi, perfectly feigning innocence – until he winked. _Winked_. Even the Pharaoh knew that winking was about as subtle as Marik’s midriff.

“Straight to the, uh, cocktails. You shouldn’t drink and duel – every good duellist knows that.”

“You should have told that to the Pharaoh the other night.”

Seto’s face was getting dangerously close to showing an emotion other than self-satisfaction.

“Is that what you’ve been whispering into Ryou’s ear in the kitchen, Yuugi?” The quality of the Pharaoh’s comebacks was inversely proportional to the amount of alcohol flowing through his system, and it was starting to show.

Yuugi raised an eyebrow, as if to say, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“So, you have a bandit beaten to within an inch of his life, completely at your mercy,” said Ryou mildly. His gentle voice made the words sound all the more disturbing. “How do you proceed?”

The Pharaoh breathed a gentle sigh of relief to himself as Kaiba instantly switched back to edgelord-vengeance-whatever mode, and they got back into the swing of the game. Although, that wandering hand of Seto’s was extremely bothersome; the sweet pink of the Pharaoh’s tan cheeks had nothing to do with the red wine he was slowly sipping, and worst of all, he knew that Yuugi was well aware of the fact.


	12. Chapter 12

“What is that, your third pot of tea, Ryou?” Yuugi was a little tipsy by now. They were in the kitchen again after their party had brutally beaten a confession out of the bandit, before searching a hidden chamber in one of the caves to find another network of caves below. “You really do want to withhold that loot, don’t you?”

“I just like to have some control over myself while I’m running the game.” He smiled – a sweet smile this time, nothing like that evil grin that came out whenever he was throwing a particularly nasty trap at his players. Perhaps the Spirit of the Ring had left its mark on Ryou’s roleplaying. “You know that I’ll catch up afterwards. I’m a dreadful lightweight, anyway.”

The kettle was already beginning to whistle, and Yuugi found himself cursing it as usual. The kettle never seemed to take long to boil when he wanted to spend time alone with Ryou. He opened another bottle of red wine and filled his glass with a small sigh of resignation.

“Yuugi…” Ryou looked oddly concerned as he refilled his beloved teapot. “Is everything okay? I’ve been getting some… weird vibes from the Pharaoh tonight.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Yuugi, with one hand running through his hair and a nervous titter. “He’s totally fucking Kaiba. It’s adorable how he thinks nobody can tell, right?”

Bakura nearly dropped the half-full kettle. “What?”

Yuugi’s cheeks flushed a deep red. Why did a little alcohol make it so damn hard to keep that mouth of his shut? “Um, I mean… I _think_ they might be. I don’t really know. _Please_ don’t tell the Pharaoh I said that.”

Ryou chuckled. “Don’t worry, those two are the last thing on my mind this evening.”

“But you said…”

“Hmm…” Ryou’s fingers were fiddling relentlessly with the hem of his oversized blue jumper. His eyes seemed to be fixed somewhere around Yuugi’s feet. “There are a few things he’s said tonight that, well…” He buried his face in his hands suddenly. “Ugh, I wish I hadn’t brought this up now. Not when we’re halfway through a game.” He looked at Yuugi through splayed fingers, visibly wincing.

Of all the things Yuugi had expected, the Pharaoh’s silly game actually working was not one of them. He knocked back a swig of his drink, then put his glass down with as much drama as the Pharaoh drawing a Duel Monsters card. Ryou was still hiding behind his own hands.

“Hey, listen, I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable. I was so caught up in teasing the Pharaoh about Ka-um, you know, stuff, that I didn’t consider your feelings at all when he started teasing me back. I should have put a stop to it.” He bit his lip. “Kind of a dick move, huh?”

“Yes, a little.” Ryou’s hands dropped from his face, but not before Yuugi noticed how they were trembling. “Are the two of you teasing me?”

“Yes and no.”

Aside from the blood pounding through Yuugi’s temples, the apartment was suspiciously quiet, but this wasn’t the time to wonder what the Pharaoh might be up to with Kaiba. He probably didn’t want to know – Seto _really_ wasn’t his type.

Ryou had deflated so much that he was almost collapsing in on himself. Yuugi closed his eyes, steeled himself, then stepped towards him.

“The Pharaoh can be unkind sometimes in his teasing, but I’ve liked you ever since I laid eyes on you, Ryou. Something about that fluffy hair of yours, the sexy British accent… I don’t know. We were in school, hormones were involved.” It was Yuugi’s turn to wince. He wasn’t sure whether to be glad for the false courage from the wine, or to regret having drunk it at all. “I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this.”

“I did wonder sometimes…” Bakura’s pale cheeks were flushed a hot pink; he was still carefully avoiding Yuugi’s gaze, but there was a distinct smile breaking through his shell of awkwardness.

“I still do like you, probably even more than I did back then. I actually _know_ you now. I’ve been trying to be subtle about it for years, but… tonight the Pharaoh decided to take things into his own hands. You know what he’s like. He sees _everything_ as a game.” Yuugi took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to be quiet n-”

Through his nervous rambling, he’d somehow failed to notice Ryou’s face moving towards his, until his words were muffled by warm, tea-flavoured lips. He nearly pulled back in surprise, but quickly relaxed into the soft kiss, drawing Ryou as close to him as possible, running his fingers through the long, messy grey hair. It was every bit as fluffy as it looked, and it felt _glorious_.

“I only have one question,” said Yuugi, drawing back, far more intoxicated from the kiss than he could ever be from wine. “Why didn’t you do this a long time ago?”

Ryou turned away, twirling a strand of hair around his finger. “It can be hard to tell with you, Yuugi. You’ve grown more confident over the years, but in some ways you’re as shy as ever. Besides, we had a hell of few years as teenagers… Being possessed by an evil spirit doesn’t really mix well with romance, does it?

“But still, I could ask the same of you – why didn’t you just, you know, _tell_ me?”

Yuugi felt hotter than Bakura’s freshly-brewed tea all of a sudden. “I really don’t… Well, for one, you’re my favourite dungeon master. Much better than the Spirit of the Ring ha, ha… I wouldn’t have wanted to make it awkward.”

“Because you’re _definitely_ not doing that now,” said Ryou, but he planted another kiss on Yuugi’s lips to let him know that he wasn’t being totally serious. “We’ve been gone a while – we’d better get back. You don’t want to miss out on discussing what to do next with Seto and the Pharaoh.”

Yuugi snorted. “Because they’re definitely-” He took a hasty gulp of his drink. “Um, yeah, doing exactly that. Let’s get back to the game.”


	13. Chapter 13

“Pharaoh…” A violent flurry of kisses punctuated by sharp, whining breaths. “You should…” Ecstasy, agony, an addictive combination of the two. “Come with me.”

Seto’s long fingers curled around the tight fabric of the Pharaoh’s trousers. Neat fingernails dug hungrily into the round flesh beneath, then firm hands pushed back and opened the gap between their bodies just enough for Seto to rise to his feet.

“Come where?” The Pharaoh was still on the floor, looking up at Seto’s tall, graceful body from the unusual vantage point. Unlike Kaiba on that balcony, he didn’t have the composure to look smug or superior while on his knees – just flustered, and mildly dishevelled from Kaiba’s hands running through his hair.

“Do I have to spell it out to you, dork?” His voice was dismissive, but he held out a tender hand and helped the Pharaoh to his feet.

_Gods_ , his knees were weak, and the warmth of Kaiba’s hand tightly gripping his own… For a moment he was back on the table of that bar, moaning, writhing, drenched in sweat as Seto grinned down at him from between his own legs.

A rough brush with Seto’s lips brought him back to reality, back to Ryou’s untidy living room with its piles of roleplay books and dice, and board games stacked haphazardly on every available surface – back to Ryou’s living room where he was alone again with Seto Kaiba.

“You think I’m going to let you whisk me away to the bathroom?” he protested, but when a light finger dragged its way across his belt buckle his mouth fell open, and Seto’s smile grew wider, even more self-satisfied.

“I’m going to make you a bet, Pharaoh – I know how much you like those.”

“Oh?” With a head pleasantly swimming with wine, the Pharaoh was beginning to lose track of all these games and bets. They were admittedly difficult to resist, though. Many people would wonder if they had a gambling problem far before it came to deadly games and bets with humiliating consequences, but it had never even crossed the Pharaoh’s mind.

“I don’t think you can handle what I’d do to you if we had more privacy. I heard you moaning when I fucked you over the table, remember, and you’re not quiet.” Kaiba smirked. “You have a very convincing façade when you’re playing your games, but all of that shatters in an instant once you’re on your back.”

“Is this a bet, or a last-ditch effort to get me to come with you?” The Pharaoh’s gaze dropped sharply downwards, then worked its way back to meet Seto’s, almost devouring him as it did. He raised an eyebrow. Despite dilated pupils and ragged breathing through parted lips, he just about managed to pull off a smirk of his own to match Kaiba’s.

“Shut up, dork,” was Seto’s response. If all else fails, call them a dork. That was the motto he lived by, and this situation was no exception.

But the Pharaoh couldn’t have spoken – or even drawn breath – through the furious lips that were once again against his. It was almost as though even their tongues felt the need to assert dominance, but in this game they were evenly matched; warm breath met stifled whimpers, hungry mouths tore into one another in a frenzy of desperate lust.

“You’re coming with me, and you know it.”

The Pharaoh wanted to protest, argue, to find some amusingly cutting comeback, but his body was weak. Seto Kaiba was the only person who could do this, who could draw out his competitive nature as part of some sadistic sexual power play and humiliate him into submission. He still couldn’t put his finger on _why_ , on what was so special about Seto, but as they barrelled into the bathroom and closed the door, and in a flurry of hands his belts and trousers flew open, the thought seemed utterly insignificant.

He sank back against the wall with a faint moan as Kaiba’s hot mouth closed around his cock. “This is…” His fingers found Bakura’s fluffy towel and clenched around a ball of it. “This is a bad idea.” But he didn’t do anything to stop it; just watched Seto’s head move back and forth in a steady rhythm and wove the fingers of his free hand into the long, brown hair where it met Seto’s graceful neck.

It was only the second time the Pharaoh had seen Kaiba on his knees like this, but he already loved it. Some might call it a submissive pose, but with his cool, confident eyes and decisive motions, Seto was undeniably the one with all the power. Warm, tingling pleasure started to build, and the Pharaoh’s hand clenched tighter around the towel, pulling it clean off the rail, as a slow whine slipped out of his mouth.

_“You have a very convincing façade when you’re playing your games, but all of that shatters in an instant once you’re on your back.”_

As much as the Pharaoh hated to concede a single damn thing to Seto Kaiba, he had been right about that much. If he hadn’t been so afraid of being overheard, he would have been begging for more right that very moment. And he didn’t beg _anyone_.

“Seto…” The name rolled off his tongue like a swear-word as he felt himself get close to his climax, but as soon as he’d said it, Seto’s lips retreated, kissing the leaking tip of the Pharaoh’s cock, and his underwear snapped back into place. A frustrated growl reverberated around his mouth.

Of course, this was the nature of their game, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

Seto brushed his fringe out of his face, grinning, before pushing the Pharaoh back against the wall in a deep kiss. There was a hint of salt beneath the scent of red wine on his breath.

“I hope I haven’t kept you in here too long, Pharaoh?”

Seto’s gloating whisper tickled the Pharaoh’s ear and he flinched.

“Seto…” His voice was softer this time. A little breathless, but calm and measured. “What do you want from me?”

Seto froze, and for a moment, his mask slipped; the corners of his mouth dropped, and one syllable escaped him. “What?”

“You heard me.” The Pharaoh studied his face. His usual confident smirk had quickly returned, though his troubled eyes weren’t fooling anyone.

“I want to best you. Somehow. Whether that’s by duelling or…” He chuckled, and brushed his fringe out of his eyes. “Well, bending you over every surface in the vicinity until you beg me to let you cum.”

The Pharaoh shook his head, desperately fighting the urge to laugh. “I think, Kaiba…” He trailed an exploratory finger over Seto’s trousers, appraising and rubbing the significant bulge. “You’re going to have to bend me over a _lot_ of tables.”

Seto bit his lip in an effort to maintain his air of indifference. “I’ll beat you eventually, Pharaoh. That ‘heart of the cards’ nonsense you’re always going on about will fail you one day, and I’ll win.”

“And I’ll be disappointed in more ways than one.”

The level of smugness on Kaiba’s face started to get dangerous; he smashed his lips against the Pharaoh’s once more, then opened the bathroom door. “You’d better go… Wouldn’t want Ryou finding out your dirty little secret, would you?”


	14. Chapter 14

The Pharaoh was lounging on the couch, carefully sipping nonchalantly from his wine glass as Yuugi and Ryou stepped back in from the kitchen. He was so focussed on his affectation of indifference that he didn’t notice the faint blush to Yuugi’s cheeks, or that his hand was resting comfortably against Ryou’s. He did, however, notice Yuugi’s eyes widen and flicker down to his crotch, then widen even further.

“Did the kettle boil?” he asked, trying not to wince as he took another sip from his drink. What kind of a question was that? He would have heard the damn thing whistling had he not been otherwise distracted.

Ryou and Yuugi exchanged confused looks, then Ryou sat down and turned his attention back to his large pile of notes, reshuffling some of the pages while grinning unsettlingly to himself.

“Did you, um… forget something, Pharaoh?” Yuugi widened his eyes still further, pointedly in the direction of the Pharaoh’s belt.

The Pharaoh glanced downwards, and his eyes grew almost as wide as Yuugi’s, a near physical impossibility. One of his belts was still unfastened, and hanging down messily from the loops beside his fly. He scrambled to fasten it. Normally his fingers were nimble and well-coordinated – they had to be, or else he’d constantly have been dropping trading cards with his dramatic drawing techniques – but under Yuugi’s amused scrutiny, he managed to fumble it at least three times before closing the buckle and regaining what little dignity he could.

“Natural one on your dex save, huh? So, um, what did I miss out on?” said Yuugi, clearing his throat. “Did you and Kaiba work out how we’re going to find this Blue-Eyes crystal thingy?”

“It’s called the Sapphire Eye of the Dragon.” Seto strolled in from the bathroom, looking every bit as nonchalant as the Pharaoh. His hair was a little tousled, his cheeks were still flushed, and there was no way of concealing the vivid purple mark just below his collar. The slight upturn to one corner of his mouth was par for the course, but there was a sparkle to his eyes that refused to be hidden behind his mask of superiority.

He took his place back at the opposite end of the table to Ryou, topped up his glass, and raised an eyebrow at the Pharaoh.

“Yes, well, we, uh…” The Pharaoh grimaced and shrugged at Kaiba, who rolled his eyes and mouthed “dork” back at him.

“Clearly there’s more to explore,” said Seto, smoothly and perfectly in character. “I’m not leaving these caves until I’ve found the Sapphire Eye of the Dragon and exacted sweet vengeance on anyone who might have been involved in taking it. My people deserve no less.”

The Pharaoh suddenly realised he’d been gazing adoringly at Seto for the duration of his undeniably dorky monologue. For someone who threw words like “dork” and “dweeb” around all the time, Seto really was doing it from a flimsily-built glass house. He quickly stood up and made his way over to his own seat, to examine his character sheet in far too much detail and hope nobody would notice the warmth in his complexion.

“Well, we should make sure there are no more of the bandit king’s men around,” said Yuugi. “We did agree to make sure the villagers would be safe, right, Pharaoh?”

The Pharaoh started, then nodded at Yuugi, who was still looking as though he might burst if he had to keep his amusement hidden for much longer.

“Don’t look at me like you didn’t just spend far too long in the kitchen,” said the Pharaoh.

It was intended to be a quiet dig, for Yuugi’s ears only, but there likely wasn’t a soul in Ryou’s apartment building who didn’t hear it. Kaiba snorted, then quickly turned it into a sort of strangled cough. Ryou’s blushing face popped up from behind his dungeon master’s screen with a raised eyebrow. Yuugi stared that Pharaoh down, as though daring him to say something more.

Teasing Yuugi had been so much easier when they shared a body, and nobody else could hear.

“And while I was in the kitchen, I suppose the two of you decided the bathroom was a better place to discuss our strategy for the rest of the game?” Yuugi was grinning so widely, his face looked as though it might crack in two.

Seto raised a questioning eyebrow under his uncharacteristically scruffy fringe, but his beetroot red cheeks were a dead giveaway. Yuugi looked to the speechless Pharaoh, then back to Kaiba, and promptly burst into manic laughter.

“He was just-”

“We were-”

Ryou straightened his notes out loudly, as if to call the room to order, but even his eyes were twinkling with silent laughter as he met the Pharaoh’s deer-in-the-headlights expression. “You really weren’t joking back there in the kitchen, were you?” he said to Yuugi, who immediately dropped his head to avoid the Pharaoh’s gaze.

“Damn it, Yuugi,” said the Pharaoh, glaring at his partner. “I thought you were _flirting_ in the kitchen, not gossiping.”

Yuugi was fiddling intensely with one of his highlights as he mumbled, “Who said I wasn’t doing both?”

“Yuugi!” Three voices called his name in indignant unison.

“Well, well,” said Kaiba, glancing at the Pharaoh with a secret smile. “Looks like it’s all coming out tonight.”

“I’m not the one with the ridiculous love bite on my neck,” Yuugi hit back. “Really, Pharaoh, did you think nobody would notice that?”

“H-how can you be sure that was _me_?”

“As much as I’d like to be defending you right now,” said Seto, stroking the mark on his neck, “who else could it have been? It wasn’t Yuugi, obviously, and we all know that Yuugi’s been following Ryou around like a lovesick puppy, so it couldn’t have been him either. Besides, you think I’d get off with either of those dweebs? You’re bad enough.” But the light in his blue eyes let the Pharaoh know he was only teasing.

“Come on Pharaoh, we all know that you’re the King of Games, not the King of Subtlety.” Yuugi stuck his tongue out. “Anyway, I, for one, think it’s kind of sweet.”

Both Seto and the Pharaoh narrowed their eyes dangerously.

“Did you just call me ‘sweet’?” said Kaiba with a slight shudder.

“You’re going to pay for this later, aibou.”

“Oh, I know,” said Yuugi. “But this has been _totally_ worth it.”

Seto flicked his fringe out of his eyes, and moved towards the Pharaoh. His lips were twisted into a strange cross between a smile of genuine pleasure and pure, self-satisfied pride. “I suppose if it’s no longer a secret…” His long fingers caught just under the Pharaoh’s chin and drew him forward. “I can do this.”

The Pharaoh closed his eyes and allowed Seto to pull him into a deep kiss. Usually their kisses were so wild, untamed, violent even, but this was gentle and tender, and he felt himself melt in a whole new way. He was just getting used to the sweet softness of Seto’s tongue against his when Kaiba drew back. The room shifted slowly back into focus, and he took a long drink from his wine glass.

Ryou cleared his throat and rolled a few dice behind his screen. “Well, would you look at that,” he said. “All this waiting around has cost you dearly… You’d better roll initiative.” His terrifying smile and the accompanying sadistic glint in his eyes had returned.

As they swiftly got back to the game, Yuugi thought about the sweet kiss they’d shared in the kitchen, then looked back to Ryou’s crooked grin; he wasn’t sure if it excited or frightened him, but he couldn’t wait until the end of the game to see where the night might take them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been a little busy lately, but will aim to update at least weekly now until this is done :)


	15. Chapter 15

“I can’t believe you got your edgelord priest killed just before we managed to get his artefact back,” said the Pharaoh, stumbling slightly over the kerb as he crossed the street, hand in hand with Seto.

“My what now?”

“Your _unnamed_ priest,” said the Pharaoh quickly. “Unnamed.”

Seto narrowed his eyes, but he wasn’t in the mood to call the Pharaoh out on his slip of the tongue. The party had nearly died before they even reached the chamber where the Sapphire Thing of the Whatever was hidden, when a group of bandits attacked them on their way in. It must have been Ryou’s revenge for derailing the game with their drunken silliness.

After the game had wound down, Ryou made great headway with a bottle of rose in the game of catch-up, but the Pharaoh knew all too well that such a game very rarely had any winners. Yuugi had quickly found himself with a very merry Ryou sitting on his lap, talking at great length about the new expansion for Monster World in between giggles and sweet little kisses.

“Well, this is sickening,” Kaiba had commented, as socially tone-deaf as ever, before suggesting that he take the Pharaoh out somewhere for an hour or two before the bars closed.

Not wanting to intrude on Yuugi’s first real opportunity to act on his less-doomed-than-previously-thought crush, the Pharaoh had agreed. Well, that was the reason he’d probably give Yuugi later; by the time the game had finished, Bakura had nearly run out of tissues from his periodic nosebleeds every time he thought about the bathroom and Seto’s warm mouth enveloping his cock, and he was starting to feel lightheaded.

A wander in the cool night air was just what he needed. Well, that and enough privacy with Seto to eventually get his release.

“Kaiba!” said the Pharaoh suddenly, as they crossed another side street. “You’re actually walking somewhere, instead of calling one of those flashy cars of yours.”

Seto raised an eyebrow. “I may have a lot of money, but I do also have perfectly functional feet.” He hesitated. “Besides, sometimes it’s nice to just be out somewhere, without having ten different people following me.”

A black car with tinted windows drove slowly past. It was the only car on the quiet road between Bakura’s place and the cocktail bar that Kaiba had chosen.

“Okay, so there are still nine different people following me. Just no chauffeur.”

“So,” said the Pharaoh, tightening his free hand around his deck. It was in the pocket of his tight trousers, right next to the aching bulge that Seto’s phone so often seemed to autocorrect “deck” to during his drunken flurries of text messages. The Pharaoh would miss those. Their incoherence, their predictability, and the flattery that came with knowing someone was thinking of you so often, even if they _were_ calling you every crappy insult their addled mind could come up with. “Are we going to have that rematch tonight?”

Kaiba’s crooked smirk was back, but he shook his head. “How about tomorrow morning instead?”

The Pharaoh chuckled. “Presumptuous, hmm? Who says that we’ll be going home together?”

Seto scoffed. “Oh, please. You’re not fooling anyone with that coy routine.”

The Pharaoh had to concede that he had a point, but he’d have risked losing Yuugi’s soul again to the Orichalcos before he would have admitted it out loud.

The street was starting to get busier, the closer they got to the city centre. Seto’s hand stiffened in the Pharaoh’s, then withdrew. The Pharaoh looked at him questioningly, but then a camera flashed from somewhere, almost blinding them both.

“I’m sorry,” said Seto, in a rare display of genuine emotion. “You might end up in some online gossip rag tomorrow. I should have tried harder to protect you, I guess…”

The Pharaoh shook his head. “It’s not like I was kissing you, or…” His hand reached out and grabbed a handful of Seto’s ass. “…doing _this_.”

Kaiba’s wide-eyed, opened-mouthed expression of surprise was more than worth the risk of being snapped again, and the Pharaoh laughed a little too loudly.

“You’re attracting attention,” Seto hissed. “Don’t make me have to punish you.”

“And don’t make _me_ have to do that again by threatening me with a good time.” Gods, he could feel the blood trickling down from his nose as he imagined how Seto might punish him later. His knees almost felt as though they might buckle, right there in an open street full of people.

Seto grabbed hold of the Pharaoh’s hand and pulled him into an alleyway between two bars. It was dark and littered with unsavoury rubbish that was better not paid attention to, but it was empty and quiet. He pushed him back up against the cold, brick wall, pinning his wrists. With a low growl, he pressed his lips to the Pharaoh’s. The tenderness he’d displayed at Ryou’s before they’d left was all gone, replaced by a ferocious, desperate violence.

The rough edges of the bricks were digging in to the Pharaoh’s arms and back, lightly grazing the exposed skin of his wrists as they put up their token struggle against the pin, but he didn’t care; the delicious friction of Seto’s thigh between his legs had his whole body burning.

“I thought we… cocktails?” The Pharaoh’s breathy voice was muffled by Seto’s lips.

Kaiba released his wrists and pressed a finger to his mouth, then ran his hands down over the black shirt, teasing at the buttons as he went. He looked up at the Pharaoh from his knees, with that smug smirk that the Pharaoh had come to know meant that he’d be fighting not to moan out loud in less than ten seconds.

Graceful fingers tore into his buckles and zip, and as Seto pushed him back against the wall he felt the bricks scrape gently at the bare skin of his ass. He barely had time to register that he may as well have been naked from the waist down in a back alley, of all places, before Kaiba’s mouth was on him again.

His hand reached out instinctively to grab at Bakura’s towel as, for a moment, he was transported back to that bathroom, but his fingers found only air; instead he grabbed hold of Kaiba’s head and held it close to him as Seto moved rhythmically back and forth, each movement perfectly calculated to maximise the exquisite, tingling pleasure. As a long, low moan escaped the Pharaoh’s lips he wondered if Kaiba was playing some kind of game with himself to give the perfect blow job; he certainly wouldn’t have put it past him.

Seto’s hands disappeared for a moment, digging around in one of his pockets for something or other. His left found its way back to the Pharaoh’s hip, neatly-trimmed nails digging lightly into the flesh, while the right snaked its way between his thighs.

“Always prepared, huh?” came the Pharaoh’s breathy voice, as a long finger applied a generous amount of lube to his rim. “I bet that briefcase of yours is full of lube and dildos… All those trading cards are just a cover.”

The smirk was quickly rubbed from his face, as he bit down hard on his lip to quell the whining moans that Seto’s finger elicited as it entered him, finding just the right spot like some kind of dragon-shaped Kaiba Corp homing missile.

As the pleasure began to build, he watched Kaiba’s head bob back and forth, tugging on his tousled brown hair every so often. With every stroke, every expertly-timed movement of Seto’s finger, an involuntary whimper slipped through his open mouth, with increasing volume.

“Fuck, Seto, please…” He didn’t even know what he was begging for, but the words tumbled stupidly out of him regardless.

Seto drew back, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His skin was visibly flushed a deep pink, even through the darkness, and the smug grin on his face would have been quite unbearable if the Pharaoh hadn’t been so thoroughly aroused.

“Can’t you… Please…” Thoughts scrambled by the amount of blood pooled between his legs, the Pharaoh could barely string a sentence together. He knew that Seto would leave him wanting, aching, but he was too far gone to bite back the words.

“I love it when you beg,” Seto said, then ran his tongue up the shaft of the Pharaoh’s twitching cock before kissing its leaking head. Just as he snapped the elastic of the Pharaoh’s boxers back in place, his phone bleeped.

The Pharaoh glanced sheepishly back towards the entrance to the alley as he quickly scrambled to get himself decent again – at least, as decent as possible for someone hiding a painful erection inside the tightest trousers known to man. He hoped nobody had seen anything.

Seto dusted off his knees as he stood up, then checked his phone. The Pharaoh watched as his eyes widened, then he scowled at the message he’d received.

“It’s Mokuba.”

At first the Pharaoh’s heart sank – had that boy been kidnapped _again_? – but then Kaiba showed him the screen of his phone. There was a message from Mokuba, consisting of a screenshot of some duellist-themed gossip website with the picture of the two of them together, plus the unmistakeable silhouette of the Pharaoh with his head back, mouth hanging open in pleasure. A fortunately-placed dumpster meant that nothing _too_ obscene was visible. A second message simply read, _“Really??”_

“Seto… The game shop isn’t far from here,” said the Pharaoh. “How about we save ourselves some dignity and head back there?”

“Won’t Yuugi…?”

The Pharaoh shook his head. “You saw the way he was all over Ryou. I don’t think he’ll be disturbing us again tonight.”

Kaiba grunted and grumbled something unintelligible, but finally agreed. His fingers wove their way between the Pharaoh’s and he pulled his hand close, looking down at him with a satisfied smile. “Looks like you lost this one, Pharaoh. By morning there won’t be a single duellist who hasn’t seen those pictures – you’ll have no choice but to admit that you let me fuck you.”

The Pharaoh’s cheeks burned with a combination of embarrassment, arousal, and the remnants of the wine flowing through him. “Does that mean _I_ get to tease _you_ when we get back?”

Seto shook his head, with a derisive laugh. “Not until you lose to me at Duel Monsters.” His smirk grew wider. “So, maybe tomorrow.”


	16. Chapter 16

“Let me know if you’ll be staying out tonight?”

“I will, Pharaoh,” said a blushing Yuugi. He leaned in for a brief kiss, while Kaiba politely averted his gaze. “I hope you enjoy your date.”

“It’s not a…”

“Oh, don’t tell me that all he’s going to get is a good pounding with your _deck_?”

Ryou stifled a laugh from somewhere inside the apartment, while Kaiba’s neck just about snapped with the force of turning so quickly to stare at Yuugi.

“How much of that wine did you drink, aibou?” The Pharaoh’s eyebrow was raised, but his expression was tinged with concern. “Are you sure you don’t need Ryou to put you to bed?”

Yuugi leaned close again, this time whispering loudly enough in the Pharaoh’s ear to make him wince. “I hope he does.” Kaiba was still staring at Yuugi as though he’d just assembled all five Exodia cards in his hand.

The Pharaoh wrapped his arms around Yuugi one last time. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“See you later,” said Yuugi with a nod, then closed the door as Kaiba and the Pharaoh headed down the stairs towards the entrance of the building.

Ryou was haphazardly piling his campaign notes in the only spare shelf space in the living room, above all of his perfectly-ordered Pathfinder books, while sipping on another glass of rose. Yuugi quickly swooped in and gathered the miniatures, and put them in Ryou’s special box that he kept by his Dungeons and Dragons books for safe-keeping. He knew that tipsy Ryou wasn’t always as careful as sober Ryou would like, and those miniatures could be fragile.

While Yuugi was carefully putting the box back on the shelf, he suddenly felt a pair of warm hands around his waist, quickly followed by even warmer lips on his neck. He smiled, allowing himself to fall back into the embrace, and closed his hands over Ryou’s.

“Do you want to see my new roleplay books?” whispered Ryou, his breath tickling Yuugi’s neck. “I left them in my bedroom.”

Laughing, Yuugi extricated himself from Ryou’s arms and turned around. “You haven’t been taking advice on subtlety from the Pharaoh, have you?”

“Come on, Yuugi…” Ryou’s voice was a little breathy, verging on whiny. “It’s getting late, I’m a bit tipsy, and we’re alone… but I couldn’t very well have just _told_ you to get in my bed, now could I?”

“What’s stopping you?”

Their faces were mere inches apart. Yuugi’s eyes were wide as ever, but far from innocent this time. Ryou bit his lip uncertainly.

“Okay then,” he said, closing his fingers around Yuugi’s wrist, just below the spiked leather bracelet. His nervous smile morphed into something a little more confident, and there was a mischievous sparkle in his eye. “It’s time for bed.”

“With a smirk like that, I almost thought you were going to ask me to roll initiative.”

Ryou’s crooked grin widened; there was definitely something of the scheming Dungeon Master in his expression, and it made Yuugi’s heart race with a mixture of eager anticipation and the kind of fear he felt when Ryou told him that his wizard had just triggered a perilous trap.

“Did I stutter, Yuugi?” Ryou’s grip around Yuugi’s wrist tightened, and he began to pull him towards the open bedroom door.

If Yuugi had expected anything from gentle, mild-mannered Ryou and his cute British accent, this certainly wasn’t it. He allowed himself to be dragged past all the books piled on the floor towards the neatly-made double bed in the middle of the room. He’d seen Ryou’s room before, of course; he smiled at the familiar pillowcases, each depicting a ten-sided die with 0 on the face up side. He definitely felt as though he’d rolled a supercritical as Ryou pushed him down onto the die-patterned duvet and straddled him.

Ryou grinned down at him for a moment with calculating eyes, then leaned down, still pinning one of Yuugi’s wrists with a surprisingly tight grip. The kisses that followed were nothing like the sweet, giggly kisses before; they were urgent, hungry, _rough_.

Yuugi resisted for all of half a second before yielding completely. The faint scent of floral shampoo as Ryou’s hair tickled his face and the soft sensation of the lips he’d been fantasising about for years were enough to make him burn all over, hips thrusting under Ryou all of their own accord.

Ryou drew back for air, flicked long grey hair out of his face, and his lips twisted into a cocky smirk. For a moment, he reminded Yuugi so much of the spirit of the ring that Yuugi reached out, ran a hand over his striped t-shirt, just to be sure… But his hair wasn’t sticking out at bizarre angles, he hadn’t started laughing maniacally yet, and Yuugi felt only the soft skin of his chest beneath the thin cotton.

“Now…” Ryou purred, stroking one of Yuugi’s leather bracelets, “There must be a reason why you wear so many of these things… Could it be that you like being restrained?”

Yuugi’s cheeks flushed so quickly that he was in danger of bursting a blood vessel. “Well, um…” He didn’t have the heart to tell Bakura that he just really liked the bondage _aesthetic_ ; it had never occurred to him that such a thing might come up. Besides, with Ryou’s ass grinding gently against him like that, he would probably have said yes to anything. He widened his eyes and waited for Ryou’s next move.

“Don’t move,” Bakura commanded, and reached under his bed, before resurfacing with a pair of soft leather restraints, a tub of lube and a sleek black dildo.

As Yuugi looked at those items, then back to Ryou’s grinning face, he felt a warm trickle from his nose.

“How do you and the Pharaoh have sex without dying of blood loss?” asked Ryou, as he dabbed at Yuugi’s face with a tissue.

Yuugi shrugged. “We do have to change the sheets annoyingly often,” he conceded. He stretched out his hands above him. “Are you going to restrain me, then, or what?”

Ryou nodded, and wrapped the restraints around his bedframe. He strapped Yuugi’s wrists in, kissing them lightly before he tightened the straps.  “Then I’m going to make you feel so good that you beg me to let you cum.”

“Okay,” Yuugi said, with a hint of trepidation. “On one condition.”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands, Yuugi.”

“Hang on – but what about safewords and all that boring, unsexy stuff? I know it gets in the way of the ‘plot’ but shouldn’t we have worked that out before now? I didn’t _think_ that this was a bad doujinshi, but I’m getting less sure by the…” He was rambling nervously again. Noticing Ryou’s raised eyebrow, he cleared his throat and got back into sexy mode. “But anyway, I think you’re going to like this condition.”

Ryou lifted an eyebrow, while his fingers teased idly at Yuugi’s belt. “I’m listening.”

Yuugi’s gaze drifted to the side as he blushed furiously, unsure if he had the nerve to keep talking. “You can do whatever you want with your hands, mouth and toys, as long as…” He closed his eyes, wincing slightly as the rest of the sentence came out of his mouth. “As long as you sit on my face while you do it.”

For a brief moment, Ryou reverted to his usual sweet self, pale cheeks flushed with warmth as he smiled, but then that almost malevolent expression returned as he undid Yuugi’s zip. “I can work with that.”

*

Yuugi shivered into the damp sheets as Ryou finally undid the restraints; he stretched out his arms and wiggled his fingers, smiling faintly at the red imprints on his wrists. Ryou tossed the restraints aside, then leaned down and kissed him, his tongue still tasting of the load he’d swallowed.

“We should probably get ourselves cleaned up,” said Ryou, stroking Yuugi’s cheek as he drew back. He stood up with a satisfied sigh, tracing a dainty finger down Yuugi’s spent, sweaty body as he did.

Yuugi nodded, though he didn’t feel like moving just yet. He lay back and admired Ryou’s slender, naked form as he wandered out of the bedroom. The memories of that evening would stay with him for a long time; a little spark zapped through him like an aftershock as he flashed back to Ryou’s mouth around his cock and moans of pleasure muffled by the beautiful ass pressing into his face.

Bakura reappeared, still naked, with a mostly-empty bottle of rose. “It seems we’re nearly out of wine,” he lamented, “but I could stay up with you all night.”

“There’s a shop just across the road from the game shop that should still be open,” said Yuugi. “And I guess if the Pharaoh’s out with Kaiba, we could always crash there tonight. Luckily my grandfather’s a pretty heavy sleeper, so we wouldn’t be disturbing him. We could hang out and play some games tomorrow too, if you’d like that?”

Ryou nodded. “That sounds like a plan,” he said, planting a gentle kiss on Yuugi’s cheek.


	17. Chapter 17

It was indeed lucky that Yuugi’s grandfather was a heavy sleeper; the Pharaoh was anything but quiet as he led Seto into the game shop and up the stairs to the bedroom he shared with Yuugi. Both men were tipsy enough to give them disadvantage on stealth rolls; Kaiba’s jacket bounced into the walls with unnecessary metal studs scraping against the paint, while the Pharaoh stumbled ahead of him towards the door with an old poster of the Dark Magician lovingly taped to it.

The Pharaoh flicked on the light and quickly closed the door, while Kaiba stood in the middle of the room, studying his surroundings with his coat tails rippling dramatically out behind him.

“I’m always telling Yuugi to close that window,” grumbled the Pharaoh, hurrying over to slam it shut before Seto’s billowing jacket knocked Yuugi’s newest puzzle off his desk. Glancing down at the untidy floor, he hastily kicked a doujinshi under the bed, whose front cover depicted Goku and Vegeta in a rather compromising position.

“It’s Yuugi’s,” he said quickly, noticing Seto’s raised eyebrow. “He thinks their rivalry comes across as really g…” He trailed off as he realised the irony of his remark.

Seto shook his head in response, then let his eyes wander around the room. “Dark Magician Girl?” he scoffed, as he examined the many posters above the bed. “This is, uh…”

There were admittedly _a lot_ of posters of Dark Magician Girl, many of them far too suggestive for the Pharaoh’s liking. Still, the ones on the wall were infinitely better than the pictures he’d found saved on Yuugi’s computer under a folder named _Homework_. He was glad, sometimes, that poor Mana had not lived to see the copious amount of lewd fanart crudely drawn in her image.

“As if you can talk,” said the Pharaoh, grinning and tugging on the collar of Seto’s jacket. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that dragon you hastened to remove from your pillow.”

Seto’s cheeks flushed pink, but before the Pharaoh could notice, he’d been pushed onto the unmade bed and was pinned down between long, slender thighs. Seto pulled off his jacket and tossed it aside; it fell to the floor with a satisfying blast of air while the Pharaoh lay back to admire his graceful body. Kaiba made short work of their clothes, and soon his jacket lay under a pile of studded belts and crumpled black fabric while their lips met with fiery hunger.

After being brought so close to release already, the Pharaoh was restless, impatient, almost delirious – and Seto knew it, that much was obvious from the wicked glint in his eye and the relentless self-satisfaction in the crooked curl of his upper lip.

Wedged between the Pharaoh’s thighs, Seto squirted a large blob of lube into his palm from a silver, dragon-shaped dispenser – where had he been keeping _that_? the Pharaoh wondered, before deciding that his dick ached too much to care about continuity – then slowly rubbed it along the length of the Pharaoh’s cock, watching with pleasure as he shivered and purred beneath him.

The Pharaoh lay back, hands resting above his head as though tangled in the chain of his puzzle again. Every hair on his body prickled at Seto’s touch, and he trembled all over as deft hands brought him closer to his climax.

With eyes half open, between panting breaths he said, “It’s not like you to be so gentle, Set-” But he interrupted his own sentence with a gasping moan as a long finger entered him, quickly finding just the right spot.

“I don’t have to be rough to have you, Pharaoh,” he returned with a cocky smile. “It only takes a single touch and you’re all mine.”

With his hips grinding onto Seto’s fingers all of their own accord, the Pharaoh was in no position to argue. “Is that what you love about me?”

Kaiba froze for a moment, disrupting the smooth rhythm of his movements. His cheeks were uncharacteristically pink as he regained his composure with a “Hmph.” He slid another finger inside the Pharaoh, just to watch him squirm with the heightened pleasure.

“It’s part of it.”

“Only – ah – part?”

Kaiba slowed down, drawing out  the exquisite pain just that little bit longer; every slight movement elicited increasingly loud, desperate moans. When the two of them duelled, sometimes it felt like a competition to see who could draw and play their cards in the hammiest, most overacted fashion, but in bed there was no contest. The whole of Domino City must have been able to hear the Pharaoh at this point.

“You’re the only person that I’ve never truly been able to beat… and that makes _this_ so much more satisfying.”

He withdrew his fingers for a moment; the Pharaoh felt empty, hungry without them, but they were soon replaced by Kaiba’s cock, slick with lube and hard as marble.

The Pharaoh looked up, watched as Kaiba’s hand slowly moved up and down his shaft, twitching at every slow, gentle thrust of his hips. Gone was the coldness in Seto’s expression, the arrogance, the mask of indifference he always wore.

“Seto…” _Gods_ , everything about this felt so good it was almost impossible to speak. Almost. “Seto, are you showing some kind of emotion that isn’t smugness or disdain?”

Kaiba narrowed his eyes, but his heart was not in it; his heart was too busy pumping blood into his cheeks and melting as he drew the Pharaoh ever nearer to his orgasm. “Shut up, dork, and let me…”

The Pharaoh began to tremble and convulse, as if those words had been the last straw. His eyes rolled back and he moaned so loudly that Seto pressed his free hand over his mouth to muffle it. A fountain of cum shot out of him, landing on his sweaty, tanned chest; Seto bent down and kissed it away, then brought his salty lips to the Pharaoh’s mouth.

“I told you…” Seto’s voice was quiet and gentle, barely more than a whisper. It was so very different to the voice he used in public, it was almost unrecognisable. His eyes were half-closed as he avoided meeting the Pharaoh’s gaze. “I love you.” The kiss that followed was tender and sincere. “I want you to keep challenging me, keep outsmarting me… and keep giving me a reason to tease you and fuck you like this.”

The Pharaoh collapsed back blissfully onto the tangled bedsheet, a distant smile flickering across his lips. “I could… I could do that.”

Seto reached out towards a golden highlight that had tumbled into the Pharaoh’s eye, but just as he brushed it aside, the door handle clicked. He froze, glancing sideways at the Pharaoh, who seemed just as confused. Before they even had the time to _think_ about covering up, Yuugi stumbled into the room, dragging a rosy-cheeked Ryou behind him with one hand and brandishing a half-drunk bottle of wine in the other.

“Oh _no_!” exclaimed the Pharaoh, hastily tossing a pillow over Seto’s erect cock.

“Pharaoh!” He nearly dropped the bottle in surprise. “I thought you’d be staying with Kaiba tonight…”

“This place was closer,” he said, “and besides, if I’d stayed with Kaiba then you wouldn’t have conveniently been able to walk in on us.”

“Convenient…? _Pharaoh_! What do you think this is, some kind of second-rate fanfic?”

“It might be,” he said. There was an unnerving hint of hope in his voice.

Yuugi’s mouth hung slightly open as a frightening realisation hit him. “Oh no, this really _is_ a second-rate erotic fanfic, isn't it?”

“Give me some of that wine,” said Seto, with a groan. “I think I’m going to need it.”


End file.
